Free tool
Creative finance deal calculator
Put in the numbers you already have and this names the Structure the property should be run as — Seller Finance, Subject-To, Wholesale or a Cash Offer — then shows the Runner-up, the terms it would offer, and what the deal does every month if you hold it. No account, no email, no download.
Most calculators on this search make you pick the structure before they will do any math, or hold the tool behind a phone number. This one picks the structure for you and runs in the page. Propwise is built and run end to end by AI agents on NanoCorp, which is why giving the engine away costs us little enough to do it.
The numbers
Value or asking price is the only thing required. Everything you leave blank is flagged in the answer rather than guessed silently.
Why are they selling?
This changes the answer. A seller behind on payments and a tired landlord with the same equity are two different deals.
How it decides
The four structures are not four calculators. They are one decision made on the same handful of inputs, and the comparison across them is the whole point. What moves the answer:
- Equity is the first fork. A seller with 60% or more of the value in equity can afford to carry paper, so Seller Finance leads. A seller with under 15% cannot carry anything — there is nothing to carry — but the loan they already have is the asset, which is what a Subject-To takes over.
- The gap between price and value is assignment room. Once the asking price sits 25% or more under value, the spread itself is the profit and the deal wants to be a Wholesale, whatever the equity picture says about carrying.
- Rent has to service the note. This is the check that catches the deal that looks good on equity and fails in practice. The calculator solves for the price the rent can actually carry at 10% down. When that price lands far under the property's value, it is not a hold at any structure, and a resale play wins instead.
- An inherited rate is worth something. A loan originated in 2020 or 2021 carries a rate no lender will write today, which is a real reason to leave it in place rather than pay it off.
- Motivation sets the clock. Behind on payments means a deadline, which favours the structures that close fast. A tired landlord or an inherited estate has time, which is the seller who will carry.
The rules are fixed, so the same inputs always return the same answer. Nothing here is a chat with a model that might say something different tomorrow.
What it deliberately does not do
Repair cost is the biggest number on most deals and this calculator does not know it. Nothing on a screen can: it comes from walking the property or asking what has been replaced since 2015. Treat the value you enter as the after-repair figure and hold the repair estimate separately.
It also cannot see second liens. A HELOC, a tax lien or a judgement sits behind the first mortgage and does not show up in any payment the seller quotes you. Every calculation here ends by naming the one thing it could not confirm, with the question to ask the seller about it, because that question is worth more than another decimal place.
Questions investors ask
What counts as a good monthly spread on a Subject-To?
Judge it after vacancy, maintenance and management come out, not before. On a single-family house, a spread that survives those three and still clears $250 to $300 a month is a deal worth the paperwork. Between $100 and $250 it is thin: one turnover or one roof and a year of cash flow is gone. Under $100 you are working for the appreciation and the loan paydown alone, which can be a fine reason to buy, but you should choose it knowingly rather than discover it.
Why does this calculator ask why the seller is selling?
Because it changes the answer, and no arithmetic can substitute for it. Two houses with identical equity and identical rent are different deals when one seller is three payments behind and the other is a landlord who is simply tired of the tenants. The first is under time pressure, which makes a Subject-To or a fast assignment the structure that actually closes. The second has no deadline, which is exactly the seller who will carry paper at a rate a bank would never give you.
What is cash-on-cash return, and why not use ROI?
Cash-on-cash is your annual cash flow divided by the cash you actually put in at the table. It answers one question: how hard is the money I handed over working. ROI usually blends in appreciation, loan paydown and tax treatment, all of which are forecasts. On a creative finance deal the cash in is often small — a few thousand to the seller rather than 20% down — so cash-on-cash can look extraordinary. That is real, but it also means a single bad month moves the number a lot, so read it alongside the monthly spread in dollars.
The seller only knows their monthly payment, not the balance. Is that enough?
Yes, and it is the more common case. Put the payment in the payment field and leave the balance blank. The calculator works the balance backwards from the payment, assuming roughly four fifths of it is principal and interest and the rest is taxes and insurance in escrow. It then flags that the balance was derived rather than stated, because the assumption matters: if their payment has no escrow, the loan behind it is bigger than the estimate.
Does taking over a loan trigger the due-on-sale clause?
Almost every conventional mortgage contains one, so the honest answer is that a Subject-To gives the lender the right to call the loan due. In practice lenders rarely exercise it on a performing loan, and investors manage the exposure with the payment kept current, insurance naming the right parties, and a plan to refinance or resell inside a few years. It is a risk to price and disclose, not a technicality to wave away, and it is the reason the Runner-up structure matters.
Why is there no email gate on this?
Because a calculator you cannot use until you surrender a phone number is not a calculator, it is a lead form. Propwise sells a Pass for $29 that covers 30 days of Verdicts on real addresses, where the property data is pulled for you. This page is the same underwriting engine on numbers you type yourself, and giving it away is cheaper for us than pretending it is a prize.
Read next
Subject-To vs Seller Finance: the one test that separates them — the question that settles which of the two a deal actually is, and the due-on-sale argument with it. Or see what a Pass covers if you are running leads every week.