New Zealand Mortgage Repayment Calculator

Almost every NZ home loan is a table loan: a reducing-balance loan where each repayment pays the interest owed since the last payment, and the rest comes off the principal. Interest is charged daily, but for a table loan that works out identical to the standard per-period formula M = P × r × (1+r)^n ÷ ((1+r)^n − 1), where P is the loan amount, r is your annual rate divided by the number of payments a year, and n is the total number of payments. The rate you are quoted is the rate the maths uses, with no special compounding convention.

This calculator treats each frequency as a genuine table loan on that basis — 52, 26, or 12 payments a year — so a fortnightly repayment is not simply half the monthly one. Paying more often reduces total interest a little, because your balance drops sooner and less interest accrues between payments. Many people also match repayments to their pay cycle. Note that a common trick, paying half the monthly amount every fortnight, is really a small overpayment (26 half-payments equals 13 monthly payments a year), which clears the loan faster than a straight fortnightly schedule.

During an interest-only period your repayment covers only the interest, so none of it reduces the balance. NZ banks usually limit a single interest-only approval to around five years. When it ends, the loan has to clear its full original balance over whatever term is left, which makes the new repayment noticeably higher than if you had been paying principal and interest all along. This calculator shows both the interest-only repayment and the higher figure that follows.

Thirty years is the usual maximum term for a NZ home loan. A shorter term raises each repayment but cuts the total interest you pay over the life of the loan, which you can see directly by shortening the term and watching the amortisation chart and total-interest figure change.

No. It shows the repayment on your loan amount only. It does not apply the Reserve Bank's loan-to-value (LVR) or debt-to-income (DTI) limits, a bank's low-equity margin for a deposit under 20%, or any application, legal, or insurance fees. Those affect how much you can borrow and what a loan costs in total, and they are handled by separate calculators and by your bank's own assessment.

Most New Zealand borrowers fix for a short term, commonly one to three years, which locks the rate and the repayment for that period; a floating rate can change at any time but usually allows unlimited extra repayments. Many people split a loan across both. This calculator uses a single rate you enter, so you can model a fixed rate for its term or a floating rate as it stands today, and re-run it whenever your rate changes.