Loan to Value Ratio – LTV  – Loan to Value Ratio is one of most used ratios in lending industries. As lenders or borrowers what should you do with LTV? In this article, we will discuss LTV in detail.

In this article, we will talk about the following –

• What is Loan to Value Ratio?
• Loan to Value Ratio Formula
• Interpretation of Loan to Value Ratio
• Loan to Value Ratio Example
• Loan to Value Ratio Example of Used Car Loans & New Car Loans
• Limitations of Loan to Value Ratio

What is Loan to Value Ratio?

---

To understand Loan to Value Ratio (LVR), let’s take a simple example. Let’s say you want to purchase a home. And you want to take the help of Bank to take a certain amount of loan. Why? Because currently, you don’t have that much cash available to buy the home all by yourself. So you go to the bank, understand their LVR and decide to buy a home.

If we add some figures, it would become easy for us to understand. Suppose you want to buy a home worth US $200,000 (the appraised value of the home in the market). Bank told you that they can only give you 80% of the amount. And the rest you need to give from your own pocket.

So this, 80% is Loan to Value Ratio. In this case, bank is paying you loan on the mortgage of US $160,000 and you need to pay US $40,000 from your own pocket to purchase the home.

Let’s have a look at the formula to understand LVR in more detail.

Loan to Value Ratio Formula

---

First, let’s have a look at the formula and then we will discuss what it means –

Loan to Value Ratio (LVR) = Mortgage Amount / Appraised Value of the Property

Loan to value ratio is one of the most important risk assessment tools in financial institutions. And before lending the money to the borrowers, lenders examine before approving the mortgage.

Normally, the appraised value of the property is the selling price. But still the lenders or the banks will send their appraisal team to value the property. And then they would decide to loan the amount (mortgage amount).

In USA, most of the cases have reported Loan to Value Ratio (LVR) less than 80%. But LVR can be more than that and in that case, the interest rates may go higher.

One thing we need to understand in LVR is this – higher would be the ratio, more would be the risk. So if the lender gives you higher LVR; that means it has more risk inherent within it. And that’s the reason the interest rate would also be higher.

And the borrower also suffers a lot due to a high LVR even if it seems that borrower is getting the benefit. When the LVR is higher, the cost of the loan increases and as the risk of the lending is much more (as the lender is paying more), the interest rate is much higher. For example, if a borrower borrows money from the bank with a Loan to Value Ratio of 95% would pay at least 1% higher interest rate than a borrower who have taken a loan with a LVR of 75%.

Also, checkout DSCR Ratio

Interpretation of Loan to Value Ratio

---

Now you may wonder why LVR is important and how should we look at LVR in terms of lending and borrowing.

Here’s how LVR affects the lending –

• Loan to Value Ratio takes a significant role in securing a mortgage or home equity loan or line of credit.
• Loan to Value Ratio also impacts the borrower in a drastic way. The borrower may seem to enjoy initially as his percentage of payment reduces. But if we consider the long term effect, it’s huge and higher LVR forces the borrower to pay much more to the lender over a period of time.
• Now let’s say that as a borrower, you accept a higher Loan to Ratio. What will happen then? If the loan to value ratio of the first mortgage is more than 80% then, lenders need private mortgage insurance (PMI). In this sort of case, the borrowers have an option. First of all, they can talk to the lenders and settle for 80% loan to value ratio and if that doesn’t become sufficient the borrowers can go for a secondary financing for the remaining amount necessary.
• Now you need to think that what would give you more benefits? If you go for first mortgage and reaches for 78% loan to value ratio, private mortgage insurance (PMI) would completely be eliminated. But in that case, the second lien, the interest for which is much more than the first mortgage must be paid off.
• This brings us to another concept altogether which is the extension of loan to value ratio (LVR) and that is combined loan to value to ratio (CLVR). CLVR helps the borrowers to keep the LVR low and thus they don’t need to pay PMI at all.

Loan to Value Ratio Example

---

In this section, we will understand Loan to Value Ratio in detail. We will take multiple examples, so that we don’t miss out on anything. Let’s get started.

At first, we will take a simple example and calculate the loan to value ratio.

LTV Ratio – Example # 1

Let’s have a look at the information below –

In US $	Bank A	Bank B
Mortgage Amount	300,000	250,000
Appraised Value of Property	400,000	350,000

Now by following the simple formula, we will calculate loan to value ratio (LVR).

LVR = Mortgage Amount / Appraised Value of Property

For Bank A, LVR would be = (300,000/400,000) = 75%.

For Bank B, LVR would be = (250,000/350,000) = 71.42%.

So what would be the conclusion after computing the LVR of both of these banks? Here is the conclusion –

First, Bank B has a lower LVR. That means the risk inherent within the loan amount would be lesser and thus, the interest rate would be lower as well. It will help the borrower. But in case of Bank A, the LVR is bit higher. But as it doesn’t reach more than 80%, the borrower doesn’t need to give private mortgage insurance.

Now, let’s look at some more examples with different variables.

LTV Ratio – Example # 2

Let’s have a look at the information below –

In US $	Bank A	Bank B
Purchase Price	400,000	350,000
Down Payment	80,000	70,000
Appraised Value of Property	400,000	350,000

In this example, we have not been given the mortgage amount; rather we have the information for down payment. So how would we compute the mortgage amount?

Here’s how – we need to deduct the down payment from the purchase price.

Let’s compute it –

In US $	Bank A	Bank B
Purchase Price	400,000	350,000
(-) Down Payment	(80,000)	(70,000)
Mortgage Amount	320,000	280,000

Now, we can calculate the loan to value ratio (LVR).

For Bank A, the loan to value ratio would be = (320,000/400,000) = 80%.

For Bank B, the loan to value ratio would be = (280,000/350,000) = 80%.

In this case, loan to value ratio for both of these banks are 80%. Now the bank has to decide whether PMI is required for this or not. In most of the case, PMI won’t be required up to 80% of LVR.

LTV Ratio – Example # 3

Now, let’s see few additional things so that we can understand the value of loan to value ratio.

In US $	Bank A	Bank B
Purchase Price	400,000	350,000
Down Payment	80,000	70,000
Appraised Value of Property	400,000	350,000

Now, here we have both purchase price and appraised value of property. In this case, what we would take into account while computing the loan to value ratio?

Here’s the deal. We need to take into account the one which is lesser of the purchase price or the appraised value of property.

Let’s calculate.

First, we will compute the loan amount (mortgage amount).

In US $	Bank A	Bank B
Purchase Price	400,000	350,000
(-) Down Payment	(80,000)	(70,000)
Mortgage Amount	320,000	280,000

Now, we would ascertain the loan to value ratio.

Let’s write down the formula to make a particular thing clear.

LVR = Mortgage Amount / Lesser of Purchase Price or Appraised value of property.

In this case, both purchase price and appraised value of property are same. So we would take the same value.

For Bank A, LVR would be = (320,000/400,000) = 80%.

For Bank B, LVR would be = (280,000/350,000) = 80%.

LTV Ratio – Example # 4

Now, let’s do another example with different appraised value of the property and purchase price.

In US $	Bank A	Bank B
Purchase Price	360,000	330,000
Down Payment	80,000	70,000
Appraised Value of Property	400,000	350,000

This is a different example because you can notice a difference between appraised value of property and the purchase price.

First, let’s calculate the mortgage amount.

In US $	Bank A	Bank B
Purchase Price	360,000	330,000
(-) Down Payment	(80,000)	(70,000)
Mortgage Amount	280,000	260,000

To get a mortgage amount, we will always deduct the down payment from the purchase price, not the appraised value of property.

Now, as the purchase price is lesser than appraised value of property, we would take purchase price into consideration while computing loan to value ratio.

Let’s have a look –

For Bank A, LVR would be = (280,000/360,000) = 77.78%.

For Bank B, LVR would be = (260,000/330,000) = 78.79%.

In this case, we can see that LVR of Bank B is slightly more than Bank A.

LTV Ratio – Example # 5 (Combined LVR)

Now there are cases where one person takes two loans to reduce the LVR and so that he needs to incur lesser costs. In that case, we need to compute Combined LVR.

Let’s look at an example.

In US $	Bank A
Loan 1	200,000
Loan 2	50,000
Appraised Value of Property	400,000

The combined LVR has a simple formula. Here it is –

CLVR = Loan 1 + Loan 2 / Total Value of the Property

Let’s calculate the Combined LVR for Bank A now –

(200,000 + 50,000)/400,000 = 62.5%.

Now this LVR is much lower. Usually, if the borrower has a good credit score, then the bank allows a LVR of more than 80%. And if the borrower doesn’t have good credit score, usually, lenders don’t go above 80%.

Loan to Value Ratio Example of Used Car Loans & New Car Loans

---

In this section, we will look at the loan to value ratio of two almost similar industries. We are taking the example of two almost similar industries so that we can understand the value of loan to value ratio and how drastically different they both are.

First, let’s have a look at the loan to value ratio example of used car loans –

source: fred

From the above graph it’s clear that this industry’s loan to value ratio is too high. It has even touched 99% in some cases. From the observation, we find that the loan to value ratio is always above 90%.

Let’s have a look at the new car loans industry in US.

Source : Fred

In the above graph, we can see that the loan to value ratio for new car loans is almost 10% lower than loan to value ratio for user cars. And for new car loans, the loan to value ratio is within the range of 80-90%.

Now the question is why so? Why loan to value ratio for used car loans is higher than the loan to value ratio for new car loans? There may be two particular reasons for that –

• First, maybe the credit worthiness of the used car owners is more doubtful than the new car users. Thus, the risk is more and that’s the reason LVR is more in case of used car loans.
• Second, as the buyers for new cars would be paying much more (as the price of new cars would be more than used cars), they are more trustworthy in terms of payment of EMI.

Also, look at Credit Analysis

Let’s have a look at the limitations of Loan to Value ratio.

Limitations of Loan to Value Ratio

---

LVR is very useful in terms of lending the money to the borrowers. But there are few things you need to keep in mind. This is applicable if the LVR is high.

• Interest rate would be much higher which will increase your total amount payable in the long run.
• You need to pay private mortgage insurance (PMI), if LVR is more than 80%. In that case you may go for a second lien (think about combined LVR).
• If your loan to value ratio is more than 100% (which is called underwater mortgage), you will not get any tax benefit.

In the final analysis

---

Loan to value ratio is very useful for both lenders and borrowers. But both of them should keep it under 80% to ensure lesser risk and better business consequences.

The post Loan to Value Ratio – LTV | Formula | Calculation appeared first on Free Investment Banking Tutorials | WallStreetMojo.