Your Property, Your Mortgage, and the Equity In Between

What earmarkIQ does with your property

Property is handled as an asset on your balance sheet, not as a separate app that lives on its own. You add the property once, and from then on it behaves like every other line in earmarkIQ: it updates itself, it shows its history, and it contributes to the one number that actually matters, which is what you are worth after everything you owe.

How the estimate is worked out

The method is indexation, and it is deliberately transparent. The UK House Price Index is an official statistic published monthly by HM Land Registry together with its partner bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is built from actual registered sale completions rather than asking prices, and it is published for each local authority as well as nationally. earmarkIQ reads the index value for your local authority in the month you bought, reads the latest published index value for the same area, and applies the ratio between them to your purchase price.

That is the whole method. There is no model second-guessing the number, no scraped listings, and no agent in the loop. The strength of indexation is that it is honest about its own inputs: you can see the purchase price, you can look up the published index for your area, and you can reproduce the result yourself on a calculator. The weakness is the same fact from the other side, which is that the index describes the average property in your local authority and yours is not the average property.

What accuracy to expect

The estimate answers one question well: how has the market in my area moved since I bought? It does not answer the question what would my house sell for on Tuesday? Those are different questions, and it is worth being precise about the gap between them.

A local authority is a large area. It can contain terraces, new-build flats, and detached houses, in streets that behave very differently from one another. A single average movement is applied to all of them. If your street has gentrified faster than the district as a whole, the estimate will be low. If your area contains a large new-build development that has skewed the local average, the estimate may be high for an older property.

The index also knows nothing about your property specifically. It has no record of the extension you added, the loft conversion, the new roof, the kitchen, the condition of the windows, or the fact that the property backs onto a railway line. Anything that has changed the fundamentals of your home since the day you bought it is invisible to an indexed figure, because the only property-specific input is a purchase price from years ago.

There is a timing point too. The index is compiled from registered completions, so it is published with a lag of roughly two months, and recent months are revised as more transactions are registered. A figure you see today for a recent month may shift slightly when the next release lands. That is a property of the official statistic, not a defect in earmarkIQ.

Overriding the estimate with your own figure

Because the method has known limits, earmarkIQ lets you replace the estimate outright. Enter your own value and the app uses that instead. It is the one number in the property section that you are always in charge of.

Override when you hold something better than an index calculation:

• A RICS survey or homebuyer report with a valuation figure in it.
• A lender's valuation from a recent mortgage application or remortgage.
• An estate agent's market appraisal, particularly if you have had two or three and can take a sensible midpoint.
• A recent completed sale of a near-identical neighbouring property — a completed sale, not an asking price.
• Your completion price, if you have only just bought. Immediately after purchase the price you paid is the best evidence available.
• After material work on the property — an extension, a conversion, a full renovation — where an indexed purchase price no longer describes the same house.

Keep two habits and the number stays useful. First, note where an overridden figure came from and when, because a lender valuation from four years ago is no longer better evidence than the index. Second, revisit it rather than leaving it frozen forever; if you have no fresher evidence, reverting to the index estimate is often the more honest choice, because at least it keeps moving with the market.

Mortgage balance, equity and loan-to-value

A property value on its own is not much use for financial planning. What you are worth is the value less the debt secured against it, and that is what earmarkIQ tracks.

You enter the mortgage balance yourself. Most UK mortgage accounts are not exposed through Open Banking in the way current accounts are, so this is a manual figure rather than a live feed. It is worth updating at least annually when your mortgage statement arrives, and after any overpayment or product transfer. If the balance goes stale, your equity will read low, which is the safer direction to be wrong in, but it is still wrong.

Loan-to-value is the number lenders care about, and it is useful to watch for a practical reason: crossing below a threshold such as 80%, 75% or 60% can open up better rates when you come to remortgage. Because your estimated value moves with the index and your balance falls with each repayment, earmarkIQ shows you approaching those thresholds well before the deal expires. Treat it as a prompt to go and get a proper valuation, not as proof that you qualify.

How property fits into net worth

earmarkIQ's net worth figure is the sum of what you own less what you owe: current accounts and savings from your connected banks, investments, any assets you have added by hand, minus credit cards, loans and other debts. Property equity joins that as one more line, and for most homeowners it immediately becomes the largest one.

Including it changes what the number is for. Without property, net worth is a snapshot of liquid life: what is in the accounts this month. With property equity included, you can see the effect of a decade of mortgage repayment, which is otherwise almost entirely invisible month to month. It also puts the rest of your finances in proportion, because a £2,000 movement in savings reads very differently next to £126,000 of equity than it does on its own.

It is worth holding the two apart in your head, though. Equity is not spendable. You cannot draw on it without selling, remortgaging or borrowing against the property, all of which have costs and consequences. A net worth figure that rises purely because the local index moved has not made you any more able to pay a bill this month. earmarkIQ shows the components separately for exactly this reason.

What Pro adds

Property tracking is available on every tier. The difference between tiers is the source of the valuation figure, not whether you can track the property at all.

The Pro address-level market valuation narrows the geography from the whole local authority down to your specific property. That removes the largest source of error in an indexed figure, which is the assumption that your home behaves like the district average. What it does not do is turn the figure into a valuation in the professional sense. It is still produced from data rather than from someone standing in your hallway, it still cannot see the state of your kitchen, and it can still be overridden by your own number whenever you have better evidence.

What earmarkIQ does not do

It is as useful to be clear about the absences as the features.

• No estate agent or portal integration. earmarkIQ has no connection to Zoopla, Rightmove, or any estate agency. Your property is not listed, marketed, or passed to anyone, and no agent contacts you as a result of adding it.
• No inspection. Nobody visits. No photographs, condition reports or floor plans are involved in producing your figure.
• No mortgage brokering. earmarkIQ shows your loan-to-value; it does not arrange, recommend or apply for mortgages on your behalf.
• No advice. Nothing in the property section is a personal recommendation. earmarkIQ is an information tool, and decisions about borrowing against or selling a home should involve a qualified professional.
• No automatic mortgage balance. The outstanding balance is a figure you enter and maintain.

Frequently asked questions

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