LoanLedger

Your fixed term is ending. Now what?

Enter your loan and the rate you are looking at. See the new payment, the balance at rollover, and what the change costs over the rest of the term.

This is a calculator, not advice. It tells you what the arithmetic does at the numbers you type in. It does not know your income, your other debts or your plans, and it does not recommend a rate, a term or a lender. For advice about your own situation, talk to a licensed financial adviser or mortgage broker.

The cliff nobody models for you

This is the calculation New Zealand mortgage holders actually need and almost nobody provides. Bank calculators work out a repayment on a new loan. Global calculators assume an American thirty-year fixed rate, where the rate is set once and never moves. Neither models the thing that dominates a New Zealand mortgage: the moment a two-year fix at 5.79% ends and the balance rolls onto whatever the market is offering.

The reason it matters is that the shock is invisible until it arrives. A household budgets around a payment for two years, treats it as fixed, and then receives a letter. Modelling it in advance turns a surprise into a plan — even if the plan is only knowing the number.

Why the balance at rollover is the hard part

You cannot work out the new payment from the original loan amount, because you have been paying the loan down. But you also cannot work it out from your current balance alone, because the rollover is in the future and the balance will be lower again by then. The calculation has to run the original schedule forward to the rollover date, take the balance at that exact point, and then amortise it over the remaining term at the new rate. That is what this page does, and it is why it asks how long you have been paying rather than asking you to look up a balance.

Rate is an input, always

There is no "current rates" table on this site and there never will be. A rates table on a static page needs weekly maintenance to stay honest, will not get it, and a stale mortgage rate presented confidently is worse than no rate at all. Get the real number from your lender or from a rates comparison site, then model it here.

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Refix questions

What is a mortgage refix?
In New Zealand most mortgages are fixed for a set period — commonly six months to five years — rather than for the whole term. When that period ends the loan does not finish; the remaining balance rolls onto a new rate, either a new fixed period or the floating rate. That rollover is the refix, and because rates move, the payment on the other side of it can be substantially different from the one you have been budgeting for.
How do I find my balance at rollover?
You do not need it. Enter the original loan amount, the rate you have been paying, the full original term and how long you have been paying — the tool works out what the balance will be at the rollover point from the schedule itself. That is more reliable than reading a number off a statement that may be months old.
Should I fix for one year or five?
That is exactly the question this tool will not answer, because the honest answer depends on your circumstances and on where rates go next, and nobody knows the latter. What it will do is show you the payment and the total interest at whatever rates you want to compare, so the trade-off is in front of you in real numbers rather than in the abstract.
Why does the payment change so much for a small rate move?
Because it applies to the whole remaining balance for the whole remaining term. On a $600,000 balance, one percentage point is $6,000 a year of extra interest at the start — roughly $230 a fortnight — and that is before compounding over the remaining decades. Small-sounding rate moves are large amounts of money on a mortgage-sized balance.
Does it account for breaking a fixed term early?
No, and deliberately so. Break fees are calculated by each lender using their own formula and their own wholesale swap rates; any figure this page produced would be invented. If you are considering breaking a fix, ask your lender for the actual break cost in writing — they are required to tell you.