Thanks for replying. Perhaps you can help set me straight in this issue a little more. I've always assumed that if you made payment according to a mortgage su

Thanks for replying. Perhaps you can help set me straight in this issue a little more. I've always assumed that if you made payment according to a mortgage such as show here http://michaelbluejay.com/house/interest.html http://michaelbluejay.com/house/interest.html you get the effect as stated under the first graph: "Notice that in year 15 when you're halfway through the term, 75% of each payment is just going to make the bank richer, and only one-fourth is actually paying down your balance and building equity. Ouch! You have to get all the way to year 22 before more of your payment goes towards principal than towards interest." So I assumed that if you made payments for the first 5 years and then sold the home, that the bank got to keep the amount it booked as interest (from the graph it looks like between 99 and 95% of your payments). The win for the home owner was the appreciation in the value of the home. The win for the bank was tons of interest. It seems from your reply that if you sell after 5 years against a 30 year mortgage the bank somehow recalculates the interest and applies the exorbitant amount back to principal. Is that what you are saying? If so, is there some layman's doc that explains how this works?