How Do I Find Out What Is Owed on a Mortgage?

The easiest way to find out what is owed on your mortgage is to check the most recent statement you've received from your lender or access your lender's online banking system. If you don't have access to that information for whatever reason, you can use an outstanding mortgage balance calculator tool or manually apply a mortgage balance formula based on the interest rate, the amount you borrowed and the payments you've made.

When you borrow money to pay for a home or other property, that initial amount borrowed is referred to as the mortgage principal. That's not the only amount you have to pay back to the bank, however, since your lender will also charge interest to make money over time, according to the terms of your loan agreement.

When you first buy your house, you'll mostly be paying interest with each mortgage payment, because the interest is assessed based on the total amount owed, and the principal is still largely paid off at that point. Later on, you'll be paying back more principal with each payment since there will be less principal left to pay interest on. Mortgage payments are typically designed so that you pay the same amount each month over the lifetime of the loan.

The situation is slightly more complicated for adjustable rate mortgages, where the interest rate can fluctuate over time. There, your rate and payments may go up and down with prevailing interest rates, but the same general principals apply.

Keep in mind that you may also pay other required payments through your mortgage lender, including payments for homeowner's insurance or for property taxes. These payments will naturally increase your mortgage payment but won't go to reduce your debt.

To find your outstanding mortgage balance, the easiest way is usually to use an online amortization or mortgage payoff calculator, such as this one from Credit Karma. Amortization refers to paying off the cost of something, such as your house, over time.

Put your initial principal, your interest rate and the length of your mortgage, such as 30 years, into the calculator. Most will generate a table or graph showing where your mortgage balance will stand, and how much you'll be paying in interest versus principal, at a given time.

If you would prefer not to put this information into an online system, you can download spreadsheet files for programs like Microsoft Excel that will allow you to do the computations on your computer.

If you don't want to use a premade mortgage payoff calculator tool for whatever reason, you can compute the amount left to pay yourself using a standard formula.

This formula can be written as B = I(1+r)ⁿ - P * [(1+r)ⁿ-1) / r]

Where B is the current balance, I is the initial balance or principal, r is the interest rate, n is the number of payments you have made so far and P is the payment. You can plug in numbers and solve this formula using any scientific or graphing calculator, calculator software or a spreadsheet program.

This formula works for other types of loans as well, including auto loans and any credit card where you pay the same amount each month and do not borrow any more money.

If you are checking your mortgage balance with a thought toward paying it all off, remember that some mortgages and other loans have a prepayment penalty. If you pay back the balance early, you'll still have to pay a little or a lot extra to make up for the lost interest to the lender.