| Year | Value | Balance | Equity | Total paid | Gain % |
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Two forces move your equity, and they work on completely different timescales. Understanding which one is doing the work in your projection is the difference between a plan and a guess.
Paying down principal is the slow, certain one. Every monthly payment splits between interest and principal, and early on that split is lopsided: on a 30-year loan at typical rates, the first few years of payments go overwhelmingly to interest. Principal repayment accelerates as the balance shrinks, so the back half of a mortgage builds equity far faster than the front half.
Appreciation is the fast, uncertain one. If a home gains value, that gain lands entirely in your equity — you did not pay for it. This is why appreciation dominates most projections and why the appreciation rate is the single most consequential number you enter here. It is also the number nobody can actually know in advance.
Try this: run your scenario twice, once at 4% appreciation and once at 1%. The gap between the two results is the honest range of uncertainty in your projection.
The year-by-year table below the chart shows the same story numerically, including total paid — a figure worth looking at, because it reveals the real cost of borrowing over a full term.
The headline payment on this page combines principal and interest with property tax, homeowner's insurance, and HOA dues — commonly abbreviated PITI plus HOA. Lenders qualify you on roughly this figure, not on principal and interest alone, which is why a home with high taxes or dues can be less affordable than its price suggests.
The donut breakdown shows how those pieces divide. In high-tax areas, tax and insurance can rival the interest portion, and unlike your mortgage principal they never go away.
Projections look precise because they print to the dollar. They are not. To keep the model readable, several real costs are excluded:
Add those back and the equity you could actually realize is lower than the projected figure. Treat the output as an upper bound on a best case, not a forecast. The Disclaimer documents every assumption in full.
The property tax rate here is estimated from area averages and is the figure most likely to be wrong for your specific property — assessments, exemptions, and local levies all vary. Confirm it with your county or municipal assessor. Confirm the interest rate, term, and mortgage insurance with a licensed lender, since only a lender can tell you what you qualify for.
The three things people ask most about the numbers on this page. The full FAQ covers mortgages more broadly.
Because this one is closer to what actually leaves your account. Listing sites usually show principal and interest only. The figure here adds property tax, homeowner's insurance, and HOA dues — the bundle lenders call PITI plus HOA.
On a home with high taxes or dues, that difference can run to several hundred dollars a month, which is exactly the gap that catches first-time buyers off guard.
Your ZIP code. The tool looks up an area rate and falls back to a state average if it can't find one — the label under the ZIP field tells you which source it used.
Treat it as a starting point, not a bill. Assessments, exemptions, and local levies vary property to property, and this is the input most likely to be wrong for your specific address. Your county or municipal assessor has the real figure.
No. If you put down less than 20% on a conventional loan you'll likely pay private mortgage insurance on top of everything shown here, and FHA loans carry their own premium.
You can approximate it by adding your estimated monthly premium into the insurance field. The FAQ covers how PMI is priced and when it comes off.
Nothing you enter here is stored or sent anywhere — every calculation runs in your browser. See the Privacy Policy for the full picture.
Two things the calculator implies but cannot say on its own.