Mortgage Calculator

A software calculator to evaluate and compare various mortgage offers.

You are here: Mortgage Calculator > Online Help > Creating a New Loan Project

Download Mortgage Calculator: mortgage-calculator.exe (1.23 MB)

Product Information Mortgage Calculator Home System Requirements Ordering Buy Now – $39.95 Volume Discounts Link to Us & Get a Free Copy Money Back Guarantee Support Online Help Contact Us Articles Mortgage Basics Buying vs. Renting ARM vs. FRM What Term to Choose How Much Can You Afford? Discount Points Repaying Your Loan Quickly Resources Mortgage Glossary Related Sites

Creating a New Loan Project

Start Mortgage Calculator. You can create new mortgage projects from the main window. Click the New mortgage button, or select Mortgage > New... from the menu or just hit Ctrl+N keys on the keyboard. The Mortgage Properties window will appear.

Mortgage Calculator can handle fixed-rate mortgages only. To compute the monthly payment, Mortgage Calculator takes the loan amount, adds compound interest and divides this sum by the total number of payments. This way your monthly paymentremains constant, while its structure changes. Over time, the interest portion of each payment decreases as the loan balance decreases while the amount to pay off the principal increases. This scheme of paying loans off is called amortization.

Setting mortgage parameters

To specify the mortgage parameters, fill in the following fields in the Mortgage Properties window:

Name – the name of the mortgage project that helps you distinguish between projects. You can select any name you wish.

Note – enter any comments you wish. For instance, you could enter the name of the lender or the bank account data. This field is optional. If you leave it blank, the corresponding cell in the table will show the date and time when the project was last modified.

Loan amount – the value of the loan amount as specified by your lender. The loan amount is the sales price of your new home minus the down payment. It must be between 1 and 10,000,000.

Nominal interest – the interest rate on your mortgage loan as specified by your lender.

Discount points number – the number of discount points you are going to pay, as agreed with your lender. A discount point is a lump sum that you pay in advance to lower the interest rate on the loan. One discount point is equal to 1% of the loan amount in cash and usually reduces the interest rate by 0.125. Learn more on paying discount points on our website.

Discount point value, % – shows by how much the interest rate decreases when you pay a discount point. The actual value of a discount point is provided by your lender. By default, this value is set to the usual value of 0.125.

Term – the loan term in years or months. The term cannot exceed 50 years, or 600 months.

Loan start date – the calendar date on which the loan starts.

Payment frequency – how often you pay: weekly, semi-monthly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or annually.

Compounding – this value shows how often the interest is added to the principal. It can be the same as payment frequency, or can be monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or annually.

Payment day – the month day or weekday on which you transfer the payment to the lender.

To apply the mortgage parameters, click the Calculate button. If you have entered a value incorrectly, it will be shown in red, and the program will prompt you to correct the error. In this case, enter the correct value and click Calculate again. If there are no more errors, Mortgage Calculator generates the Amortization Schedule table:

Amortization schedule

Saving the project

To save the current loan project, click Save or press Ctrl+S on the keyboard.
To close the current window without saving, press Alt+F4 and click No when prompted to save changes.

Saving the project

When saved, your new loan project will be included in the loan table.


Getting Started	Using an Amortization Schedule