By Jessica Martinez · Contributing Writer, Business & FinanceEnter your home value, age and existing mortgage balance. The calculator applies the HUD principal limit factor for your age group, caps at $1,249,125, then subtracts what you owe plus closing costs.
By Jessica Martinez · Contributing Writer, Business & FinanceThis is a planning number, not a quote. A HUD-approved counselor and a licensed lender will give you the figure that actually applies to your file.
Three inputs run through the formula: your home value (capped at the federal limit), a principal limit factor keyed to the youngest borrower's age band, and whatever you already owe plus closing costs, which come off the top. Nothing here estimates your credit, your income, or a specific lender's margin.
If you would rather not enter your name or scroll past this much explanation, there is a shorter three-number version that skips the contact fields entirely and shows its cost math inline.
This tool groups ages into six bands rather than the exact per-year table HUD publishes, which keeps the dropdown short but means your true factor could sit a little above or below the number shown here. The bands and the figures behind them:
| Age band | Factor used here | On a $450,000 home |
|---|---|---|
| 62 | 0.40 | $180,000 principal limit |
| 65 | 0.43 | $193,500 principal limit |
| 70-72 | 0.49 | $220,500 principal limit |
| 75 | 0.54 | $243,000 principal limit |
| 80 | 0.60 | $270,000 principal limit |
| 85+ | 0.66 | $297,000 principal limit |
Figures are this calculator's own banded model, built in the shape of HUD's age-based principal limit factor structure. They are presented as-is for planning purposes; HUD's official tables assign a distinct factor to every age and every expected rate, so treat the bands above as a rough stand-in, not a lookup of the current published table.
The home equity calculator shows what a HELOC path would look like on the same house, and the balance growth calculator shows what the loan above turns into after ten or twenty years of no payments.
Once you have a rough proceeds figure, two questions usually follow. What if I compared this to a HELOC instead, which the side-by-side payment-preference tool answers directly, and what does the loan cost me if I never make a payment, which the no-payment balance growth tool shows year by year. For the source figures behind the $1,249,125 cap and the standard closing costs, see the dated 2026 lending limit table.
This calculator uses six age bands, each tied to a factor that HUD's principal limit tables generally raise as the youngest borrower gets older. Moving from the 62 band to the 70-72 band lifts the factor from 0.40 to 0.49, a nine-point swing on the same home value.
The calculator caps the value at $1,249,125, the 2026 HECM maximum claim amount set by HUD Mortgagee Letter 2025-22. Enter $2 million and the math still runs on $1,249,125, because that is the ceiling federal rules allow regardless of appraisal.
No. The closing costs field is a single number you supply, and it is on you to include upfront mortgage insurance, origination fees and third-party costs in that figure if you want them reflected. The cost reference page breaks each of those out separately.
Expected rates and margins are set by each lender, not by this page, and a half-point difference shifts the principal limit factor enough to change the result by thousands of dollars. Get more than one quote before deciding anything.