Equity Release Supermarket has long been an industry leader in technological innovation – and our ingenuity shows.
We were the first broker to introduce the use of an online calculator and have gone on to launch a range of calculators to assist our customers in a way that none of our competitors have followed.
These free-to-use tools bring equity release plans to life. By converting a broad concept into solid numbers, customers can easily browse their options, tailoring their choices to more accurately match their personal circumstances.
Continue reading, below, to find out more about this state-of-the-art technology.
How do the calculators work?
When weighing up equity release, you want to know if you can actually turn your retirement dreams into a reality. This boils down to one very important question; how much money can I release?
Well, our free-to-use tools provide you with an answer within seconds. Typically, all you need to do is input your age, postcode and property value, and our calculators will tell you the maximum amount of money you can release for that particular type of equity release plan.
If you were 65 years old with a property in Manchester worth £150,000, for example, our drawdown calculator would show that you can release up to £60,000. From there, you are free to compare plans from different lenders, and find out more about drawdown lifetime mortgages in the process.
However, it is worth noting that some of our calculators require extra information. On our income calculator, for instance, you can choose the term over which you’d like to receive your income.
What’s the difference between each calculator?
While other equity release brokers are happy to offer just one calculator, typically for a lump sum lifetime mortgage, we believe that this approach does not appropriately represent the diversity of the equity release market or your broader options for later life lending.
That’s why Equity Release Supermarket offer a calculator for each type of lifetime mortgage as well as for home reversion plans and for RIO (retirement interest-only) mortgages; that’s 9 in total. Having a calculator that is specific to each option is vital as each equity release plan or mortgage has unique features that impact the final calculations of your loan.
Calculating your loan
For many plans, our equity release calculators provide the maximum amount of money a customer could release from their property.
Our lump sum calculator goes one better as your results show you not only what you could borrow with this lifetime mortgage, but also show you the maximum you could borrow with an enhanced lifetime mortgage (where more money could be borrowed due to existing health conditions) and an interest-only plan (where interest accruing on the plan is repaid monthly).
For more information about the health conditions that qualify for enhanced plans, speak to one of our advisers.
Calculating how much you could save
As well as finding out how much you could borrow, Equity Release Supermarket also offers a number of ‘analysis’ calculators.
For example, our voluntary repayment calculator reveals how you could manage the interest accruing on a lifetime mortgage by making ad hoc voluntary repayments. You just need to provide your proposed loan amount, interest rate and the percentage you would like to repay every year (up to 10% of ther amount borrowed p.a.) – and our calculator will do the rest.
We also have an option for customers who have already released equity; our switch plans calculator. This calculator compares your current equity release balance against other equity release plan rates to see if you can get a better deal and shows after how many years your ‘break-even’ point is. This is the point where if the new rate is favourable, you could save money by switching. Its functionality even extends to calculating the associated costs of changing plans, including any early repayment charges that may be triggered.
Calculating remaining inheritance
Of course, releasing equity affects more than just your bank account, it can also have a long-term financial impact on your family.
Our remaining equity calculator helps you to better understand this. Namely, this calculator shows you the amount of inheritance you will leave behind when you take out a roll-up lifetime mortgage (where no repayments are made), taking annual interest rates and house price inflation into account.
As more older Britons become savvier with online technology, our easy-to-use calculators are a great way of helping our customers gain additional information, while offering them greater flexibility than ever before online.
Whatever your plans, our range of calculators will give you a good idea of how much money you could receive through equity release. To take the next step, contact the Equity Release Supermarket team on Freephone 0800 802 1051 or email [email protected].
