Land Loan Calculator

The land loan calculator below needs three numbers. What the parcel costs, what rate you have been quoted, and how many years you have to pay it off. Change any of them and the payment updates as you type.

Then there is a fourth number, and it is the one that catches land buyers out. On a lot of land notes, the term and the amortization schedule are two different things, which means the loan does not end when the payments end. One credit union publishes its own example. Three years of payments on a $40,000 loan retire about $1,140 of principal, roughly 2.9 percent of what was borrowed, and the rest falls due in a single lump.

Not one of the calculators ranking for this search has a field for that. Ours does.

Underneath the calculator is what we found when we went looking for real numbers. Lenders do publish their land rates, and once you line them up they disagree with each other and with most of what gets written about them. On the down payment alone the published answers run from 5 percent to 35 percent.

What to Put in the Calculator (and Where to Get a Rate Worth Using)

You probably just typed in a rate you half-guessed. Everyone does, because the pages that rank for this search do not give you one. The page currently sitting at the top of Google offers a single sentence for the entire question, that land rates "range from 6% to 9%", with no date on it and no lender named.

A land loan calculator is only as honest as the rate you feed it, so it is worth spending five minutes getting a real one.

Price, down payment, rate and term are the obvious four. The two most people skip are the two that matter most on land, the balloon and the property tax, and both have their own fields above.

The distinction that trips people up is the note rate versus the APR. They are not the same number, and lenders quote both.

EastRise publishes a land loan at a 5.63 percent rate carrying a 7.10 percent APR. That 1.47 point gap is fees, not interest. Type the APR into the rate box and you will overstate your payment, so use the note rate to calculate and the APR to compare lenders against each other.

Four things worth asking for before you trust any quote.

• A rate sheet with a date on it. Truliant and EastRise both stamp theirs to the day.


• The term and the amortization period, separately. If they differ, there is a balloon.


• Whether an origination fee applies, and whether it can be financed.


• Whether the quoted figure is a note rate or an APR.

One reason not to lift a rate from a web page. FNC Bank's land loan page states its terms plainly, then notes that "Rates effective as of 4/5/23 are subject to change and can be discontinued without notice."

The bank is being straight with you. It is simply a three-year-old number sitting on a page you are reading today, and no calculator will warn you about that. Get your figure from a lender who lends on land in your state, and get it this week.

What a Land Loan Actually Costs in 2026

Everyone tells you land money is expensive. On the day we wrote this, two of the land rates we found published were cheaper than the going rate on a house.

Freddie Mac put the 30-year fixed mortgage average at 6.58 percent as of 23 July 2026. Against that benchmark, here is what land lenders were actually publishing.

Compare like with like. The Freddie Mac figure is a note rate, not an APR, so it belongs next to the rate column and not the APR column. Read that way, EastRise's 5.63 percent and 6.13 percent both sit below the 30-year mortgage average, and Communication Federal's 7.250 percent is about two thirds of a point above it.

So the widely repeated claim that land runs 1.5 to 3 points over a mortgage does not hold up against what lenders were publishing this week. A popular YouTube explainer with nearly 20,000 views puts raw land at 7 to 12 percent. That is what buyers are being told. It is not what the rate sheets say.

There is a fairer comparison to make, though, and it goes the other way. Land loans run ten or fifteen years, not thirty, so the honest benchmark is the 15-year mortgage, which Freddie Mac put at 5.96 percent that same week. Measured against that, only EastRise's 1/1 product still undercuts a house, and every APR in the table sits well above it.

The premium is real. It is just not where the articles say it is.

Look at EastRise again, where a 5.63 percent note rate becomes a 7.10 percent APR once fees are counted. Then look at the term, ten years rather than thirty. Both Truliant and FNC charge a one percent origination fee on top.

Credit where it is due. LandSearch's 6 to 9 percent band, thin as it is, does contain most of the rates we verified. The problem is not that it is wrong. It is that an undated range with no lender attached cannot be checked by the person relying on it.

How Much You Need Down, and Why Every Lender Tells You Something Different

Four lenders, one federal guideline, one kind of asset, and answers running from 5 percent to 35 percent. They are all telling the truth.

That last row is the one nobody writing about land loans seems to mention, and it explains most of the rest.

Federal bank regulators publish a table of supervisory loan-to-value limits in the Interagency Guidelines for Real Estate Lending Policies. Raw land is set at 65. Land development sits at 75. Improved property is set at 85.

A 65 percent loan-to-value limit means 35 percent down. The entire gap between financing dirt and financing a house, which competing articles assert without ever citing a source, is written down in one federal table as a 20 point spread.

Two cautions, because this is guidance rather than a hard ceiling. The guidelines say that "Institutions should establish their own internal loan-to-value limits for real estate loans", and they allow lending above the supervisory numbers so long as the total stays inside a cap tied to the bank's capital. They also warn that "The establishment of these supervisory limits should not be interpreted to mean that loans at these levels will automatically be considered sound." No bank is forbidden from going above 65 percent. It is the line an examiner measures them against.

Now the part that resolves the table. Those guidelines apply to FDIC-supervised institutions, defined in the regulation as "any insured depository institution for which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is the appropriate Federal banking agency." Credit unions are not that. They answer to the National Credit Union Administration, and this particular appendix does not reach them.

Which is why Communication Federal can advertise 95 percent loan-to-value on land its own page describes as undeveloped, while the bank guideline for raw land sits thirty points below.

The down payment is not the only gate, either. Arkansas Federal wants a 620 credit score and will not write a land loan under $20,000. Acreage caps are the quiet one. Arkansas Federal and Truliant both stop at 10 acres, and FNC prices above and below 10 acres differently, so a 40 acre parcel simply rules several of these lenders out before the conversation starts.

The lesson is not that credit unions are lax. On land, the charter of the institution you walk into moves your down payment more than the parcel does. Shop both.

The Balloon Payment No Other Calculator Shows You

Canyon View Credit Union publishes this example on its own website. A $40,000 lot loan at 7.75 percent APR, amortized over 30 years, with a 36-month term. The payment is about $286. The balloon is $38,859.92.

Read those two numbers together. You pay for three years and you still owe almost exactly what you borrowed.

Here is the arithmetic the lender does not spell out, run on their figures.

Just under 89 cents of every dollar went to interest. The loan is 2.9 percent smaller than it was the day it was written.

This is not one odd lender. Of the six whose published terms we read, four write the term shorter than the amortization, which is a balloon by construction.

Arkansas Federal is the clearest about it, offering "three fixed-rate balloon mortgage options" and nothing else, with the balloon stretching as the loan gets bigger. Three years on loans from $20,000, four years from $50,000, five years from $100,000. FNC Bank writes a "10-year term based on a 20-year amortization rate", and EastRise lists its land products as "10 Years, 20-Year Amortization".

That is worth saying plainly, because it cuts against the usual warning. A balloon on a land deal is not a red flag or a seller-financing trick. It is the ordinary shape of institutional land lending, and banks and credit unions write them as routinely as anyone.

When the balloon lands matters enormously, and the monthly payment will not tell you. On a $45,000 parcel with 20 percent down, $36,000 financed at 8.5 percent on a 20 year schedule, the payment is $312.42 no matter which of these you sign.

Ten years of payments, and the debt has shrunk by about 30 percent. On the balloon date you refinance, sell, or pay cash, and a refinance is not promised to you.

Truliant is the clearest exception. It writes land and lot loans on "Terms from 144 to 180 months" with no balloon mentioned, which is twelve to fifteen years of fully amortizing payments. Ask whether a lender offers a fully amortizing option, because a balloon is a term you can negotiate rather than a law of nature.

Set the balloon field above to the year yours comes due, and the calculator will show you the lump sum and how little of the loan your payments will have retired by then.

Why Your First Few Years Barely Touch the Balance

Paying $10,316 and reducing your debt by $1,140 sounds like a trick. It is just how amortization works, and on land it bites harder.

Interest is charged on what you still owe. Early on you owe nearly the whole amount, so nearly the whole payment is interest and only a sliver reaches the principal. That ratio flips slowly, over years. Open the year-by-year schedule in the calculator and you can watch the interest column fall as the principal column climbs.

What makes land different is the short term. A 30-year mortgage gives the flip a long time to happen, while a ten-year land note with a balloon at year three ends while your payments are still almost entirely interest.

Two levers change this, and the calculator prices both.

The rate is the obvious one. On $36,000 over 15 years, 6 percent costs $303.79 a month and $18,682 in total interest.

At 7.25 percent it is $328.63 and $23,154. At 8.5 percent, $354.51 and $27,811. At 10 percent, $386.86 and $33,634.

That four point swing is $83 a month and nearly $15,000 in interest, on a loan most people would call small.

The down payment is the underrated lever, precisely because land terms are short. Take Communication Federal's published 7.250 percent over 15 years on a $45,000 parcel. Put 5 percent down and you pay $390.25 a month and $27,494.80 in interest. Put 25 percent down and it is $308.09 a month and $21,706.42.

An extra $9,000 at closing saves $5,788 in interest. If you are choosing between a slightly nicer parcel and a bigger deposit on a plainer one, run both before you decide.

What the Payment Number Leaves Out

The figure at the top of this page is what your lender collects. It is not what the land costs you to own.

Property tax is the first gap, and it is a bigger one on land than on a house. Six of the seven calculators ranking for this search have no field for it at all.

There is usually no escrow account on a raw land loan, so nobody is quietly collecting a twelfth of the tax bill each month. The county bills you directly, once or twice a year, and having the money ready is entirely your job. Add the annual figure to the tax field above and the calculator will fold it into the monthly number.

Fees are the second gap. Truliant states that a "1% origination fee applies and cannot be financed into loan" and requires "full title and full appraisal". FNC applies a one percent origination fee too. On a $40,000 loan that is $400 of cash you need at closing and cannot roll into the balance.

Then closing costs, where we are going to decline to give you a number. Title search, title insurance, survey, recording and attorney fees all apply, and the lender pages we verified state which of them are required without publishing what they cost.

The dollar ranges floating around for these come from land blogs rather than from anyone who actually charges them. An article that criticizes other people for unsourced figures should not print one of its own. Ask your title company for a written estimate on your specific parcel and county.

One more thing the payment ignores entirely. Getting power, water or a septic system to a bare parcel is its own budget, sometimes larger than the land itself. We have broken those costs down separately in our guide to what it costs to get utilities on land.

Running the Same Parcel Through Owner Financing

The calculator does not care who your lender is. Type in the seller's terms instead of a bank's and you can compare the two properly, which is something a listing almost never lets you do.

We sell owner-financed parcels in six rural counties, so this is the arithmetic we work with daily. Owner financing means the seller carries the note and you pay them directly, with no bank in the middle. The mechanics of the deal and what the term actually commits you to are covered in our explainer on owner will carry.

What the calculator is good for is the honest comparison. Take a $45,000 parcel with 20 percent down, so $36,000 financed. At Communication Federal's published 7.250 percent over 15 years, that is $328.63 a month.

Now put the same $36,000 on a seller-carried note at 9 percent over the same 15 years. That comes to $365.14, about $37 more each month. Treat the 9 percent as an illustration, not a rate we are quoting you.

That is the trade in one line. Owner financing usually asks less of your credit file and less cash up front, and charges you for it in the rate.

Whether $37 a month is worth skipping a bank application depends on your situation, and on whether a bank would have said yes at all. At least it is now a number rather than a feeling. Run your own figures above before you take anyone's word for what a listing costs.

Before signing anything with a seller, pin down the balloon date and the balloon balance in writing, in dollars rather than as a percentage. Use a title company or attorney to record the deed so ownership actually lands in your name, which we cover in more depth in deed vs title.

If the parcel is unimproved, a lender's view of it changes too, and that is worth understanding before you apply. We cover it in what unimproved land means.

Land Loan Calculator FAQ

Why is my land payment higher than a mortgage for the same amount?

Almost always the term, not the rate. Borrow $36,000 over 15 years at 7.250 percent and the payment is $328.63, while the same $36,000 on a 30-year mortgage at the 6.58 percent benchmark is $229.44. You are paying it off in half the time. The upside is that the shorter term costs you far less interest overall.

How much do I need to put down on land?

Published requirements currently run from 5 percent to 35 percent. Credit unions advertise the lowest figures, with one offering 95 percent loan-to-value on undeveloped land, while the federal supervisory guideline for banks sets raw land at 65 percent loan-to-value, implying 35 percent down. The lender's charter drives this more than the parcel does.

What is a balloon payment on a land loan?

It means the note's term is shorter than its amortization schedule, so a lump sum comes due at the end. Four of the six lenders whose terms we checked write them, including ordinary banks and credit unions. On one published example, three years of payments retired 2.9 percent of the loan and the remaining $38,859.92 fell due at once.

What interest rate should I use in the land loan calculator?

Use a dated rate from a lender who lends on land in your state. As of 1 August 2026, published land rates ran from 5.63 percent as a note rate up to 8.99 percent as an APR. Check which of the two you have been quoted, because the same loan can show a 5.63 percent rate and a 7.10 percent APR.

Does the calculator include property taxes?

Only if you add them in the property tax field. Raw land loans usually have no escrow account, so the county bills you directly rather than collecting a share each month with your payment. Six of the seven competing calculators omit tax entirely, which makes every payment figure they produce lower than what you will actually spend.

Can I buy land with no money down?

Some lenders advertise up to 100 percent financing, with extra conditions on debt-to-income and credit. Treat it as a conditional exception rather than the normal path, since most published land programs want between 5 and 25 percent down. We have written separately about buying land with little or no money.