Essentials Home Equity Loan Calculator Spreadsheet Template for Google Sheets & Excel

The home first: what it is worth and what is still owed on the mortgage. The difference between those two is the equity, reported both as a figure and as a share of the home's value. From there the sheet works out what borrowing would do to that position. The maximum borrowable line applies a common lender ceiling of eighty percent loan-to-value - the figure is written into the label rather than hidden, and it is a convention rather than a rule, so check what your own lender uses. The combined loan-to-value shows where the new borrowing would put you against the value of the home, and the last line shows the equity that would remain. That last figure is the one worth sitting with. Borrowing against a home converts equity into cash and a payment, and seeing the remaining equity as a number - rather than as a percentage nobody pictures - is the clearest statement of what the transaction does. Beneath, the payment details: the monthly payment, the total interest taken from the schedule rather than estimated, and the total cost.

A row per month, each carrying the date, the payment, how much of it goes to principal, how much to interest, the running total paid, the balance left and the cumulative interest. The cumulative interest column is the one that repays reading. It grows fastest at the start, when the balance is largest, and the figure it reaches by the halfway point is larger than the halfway point suggests - which is the argument for looking at a schedule rather than a payment.

Six figures and two charts. The equity available, the monthly payment and the total interest over the life of the loan on the top row; the combined loan-to-value the new borrowing would put you at, the maximum borrowable at the ceiling you set, and the total cost on the second. Setting available equity against the payment is the comparison the dashboard exists for. One is what the house has accumulated, the other is what accessing part of it costs each month, and the two are rarely considered in the same glance. The combined loan-to-value beside them is the figure a lender will look at first. The charts plot the balance falling and the split between principal and interest.