Property & Mortgage
Track a home (or any real estate) as a holding that revalues itself over time, with an optional mortgage that pays itself down every month, the way your bank amortizes it.
Adding a property
- Use Add holding and pick the Property class to open the property wizard.
- Enter the address, its current value, and an expected appreciation rate. The value then compounds at that rate automatically (you can adjust or remove this later under Settings → Value schedules).
- If it carries a mortgage, tick This property has a mortgage and enter the balance remaining today (not the original loan), the interest rate, the months remaining, and the cash account the payments come from.
This creates two lines on your balance sheet: the property (an asset) and the mortgage (a liability), plus a payment schedule that runs by itself.
How the mortgage repays itself
The schedule is a fixed annuity, the standard for mortgages:
- The monthly payment is a fixed amount, computed from the balance, rate, and months remaining.
- Each month, interest is charged on the remaining balance: interest = balance × rate / 12. Whatever is left of the payment repays principal.
- Early in the loan the balance is large, so most of the payment is interest. As the balance shrinks, more of the same payment goes to principal. This is why the loan seems to barely move at first and then melts quickly near the end.
Every month the app books the principal against the mortgage (the debt shrinks) and takes the full payment out of the funding account. Your net worth only drops by the interest. The principal part just moves money from cash to equity in the property. Missed months (e.g. the app wasn't running) are caught up exactly, month by month.
Property & mortgage details
Open the ⋮ menu on the property line or the mortgage line and choose Mortgage details to see, in one view:
- your equity: property value minus the mortgage balance,
- the fixed monthly payment, rate, and how many payments have been made,
- the next payment's interest/principal split,
- the projected payoff date and total interest still to pay,
- the full repayment table: the first year month by month, then per year.
Changing the mortgage
Use the pencil in that view to revise the interest rate (e.g. a variable-rate reset or refinance), the months remaining, or the cash account that pays it. The monthly payment is recomputed from the balance owed today over the new remaining term, exactly what your bank does at a revision. Payments already made stay counted, and the rate on the Yield tab follows along.
Extra repayments
Interest is always computed on the live balance. If you pay down the mortgage manually (record a trade from cash to the mortgage line), future interest drops immediately and the loan finishes early. The payment stays the same, it just repays more principal. The details view reflects this straight away.
Good to know
- Deleting the payment schedule (from Mortgage details) only stops the automation; the mortgage line and its history stay.
- The mortgage's interest rate also appears as a negative yield on the Yield tab, so its monthly cost is visible there.
- The schedule ends by itself when the balance reaches zero or the term runs out.