Seller Finance Calculator

Seller financing — also called owner financing or a seller carry — is a sale where the seller acts as the bank. The buyer makes a down payment and signs a note promising monthly payments to the seller instead of to a lender. The math is ordinary amortization: subtract the down payment from the sale price to get the note amount, then spread that balance across the term at the agreed rate. What makes it different from a bank loan is that every one of those inputs is negotiated between two people rather than set by an underwriter, which is exactly why both sides benefit from seeing the numbers before anything is agreed. Enter a price, a down payment, a rate, and a term above and the calculator returns the payment and the full schedule — every month's split between interest and principal, and the balance remaining after each one. Early payments are mostly interest; the crossover to mostly-principal usually lands years in, and seeing where it falls tells you a great deal about who the structure actually favors.

Seller financing has two parties, so this calculator reports both sides of the same schedule. Total interest income is what the note earns the seller beyond the price of the house. Total collected is the down payment plus every payment received — the number that answers what the sale ultimately produces. The seller's annualized return, meanwhile, is usually just the stated interest rate: that's what the rate means, and it holds whether or not the note carries a balloon or an interest-only start, because every dollar outstanding is still accruing at that rate. The exception is a principal-only period, which charges no interest at all for its duration — so the calculator surfaces an effective-yield figure only in that case, where the return genuinely falls below the rate on the contract. Sellers weighing a carry against cashing out are comparing those numbers to what the same money could do elsewhere, and against the fact that a note pays out over years instead of all at once.

A balloon is the exit most seller-financed deals use. The payment is calculated as though the loan runs the full term — 30 years, say, so the monthly number stays affordable — but the entire remaining balance comes due as a single lump-sum payoff at a fixed earlier date, commonly year 5 or year 7. That's the compromise that makes long amortizations acceptable to a seller who doesn't want to wait three decades to be cashed out. Turn the balloon on and the calculator shows the payoff amount and truncates the schedule at that month, so you can see exactly how much principal has actually been retired by then — typically much less than people expect, because the early years are interest-heavy. That number matters to both parties: it's what the buyer has to refinance or repay, and what the seller is counting on receiving. A credible plan for it is the difference between a balloon and a problem.

The two entry options cover the first years of the note. Interest-only means the buyer pays interest and nothing else for a set period, so the payment is smaller and the balance doesn't move — useful when a property needs stabilizing, a rehab is underway, or cash flow is thin at the start, at the cost of arriving at the balloon owing every dollar of the original note. Principal-only is the mirror image and much rarer: payments go entirely to the balance with no interest charged for that period, which a seller might grant early on to move a property or bridge a gap, and which pays the buyer back in a lower total cost. Toggle either one and the schedule re-colors the affected months so the shape of the deal is visible rather than described. If you're working the other direction — deciding what price and terms to propose, and what better-than-market terms are worth in purchase price — start with the Instant Creative Offer Calculator instead, then come back here for the schedule.