Pre-foreclosure Equity Calculator: Catch Up, List or Take a Cash Offer

Authored by Carson Nordmann, Founder of Keystone Court Data. See our editorial standards.

When a homeowner falls behind and a foreclosure has started, the same few questions come up: how much it takes to catch the loan up, how much equity is left, how fast that equity shrinks while the case runs, and what the owner would walk away with from listing the house or from a cash offer. Type in the figures from the loan statements and your own estimates, and the calculator puts the answers side by side.

How each number is worked out

• Equity today: the value minus the loan payoff and the other debts. It is before selling costs, so a sale at that value would usually put less than this in the owner's hands.
• Equity left by the sale date: the same, after the payoff has grown by the monthly amount you typed for each month until the sale date. It assumes nothing is paid and the value stays where you typed it. It is not what a foreclosure sale would pay the owner: such a sale can bring much less than market value, and any money left over goes to other creditors first and reaches the owner only as the state's rules allow.
• To bring the loan current: today, the amount you typed. By the sale date, that amount plus one more payment and one more late fee for each due date by then; with a part month left, a range, since a due date may or may not fall in it. It leaves out foreclosure costs added after today, which the servicer's quote would include.
• Bring the loan current and keep it: the amount to bring it current comes off what is owed, so the equity shown is after that payment, roughly. Like equity today, it is before any selling costs; part of a payment can go to an escrow account rather than the loan.
• Each month of waiting: the amount you typed as added to the payoff each month.
• List and sell: the value minus selling costs and getting it ready, minus the payoff grown to the closing month, minus the other debts.
• Cash offer as it is: the offer minus the owner's costs in that sale, minus the payoff grown to the closing month, minus the other debts.
• If the value is off: equity today and the listing net at 10% and 5% below, and 5% above, the value you typed. The cash offer stays as typed.

What it leaves out

Income tax on a sale or on any debt a lender forgives, any amount still owed after a sale for less than the debts, the effect on the owner's credit, moving costs, any help a lender or program offers with them, a loan modification, a repayment or forbearance plan, a deed in lieu of foreclosure, cash-for-keys or relocation help from a lender, a bankruptcy filing, interest, taxes or dues that keep adding to the other debts while time passes, a sale date being postponed, and what would happen to any money left over after a foreclosure sale. It does not know the loan's terms, the lender's rules or the state's foreclosure law. Whether a loan can be brought current, until when, and for what amount, depends on the loan and the state; the inputs here are only the figures and estimates you type in. Some states set rules for buyers who purchase a home in foreclosure from its owner, such as a written contract and a right to cancel; an attorney or housing counselor can say whether any apply.

Related

• Foreclosure timeline by state
• Foreclosure notice decoder
• Lis pendens decoder
• Deal math calculator
• Auction max bid calculator
• All free tools

General information only, not investment, financial, tax or legal advice. The calculator only does arithmetic on the numbers typed into it; it holds no data about any property, owner, loan or market.