The mortgage remains a debt, alongside the home

The home and the mortgage are two items in the estate inventory. On one line is the house, with a value on the date of death and a source. On the other line is the loan, with the balance of the debt on that same date and the lender as the source. You do not deduct the debt from the home, once and for all, into one net line. A net line hides which figure came from the estate agent and which figure came from the bank. Both numbers can still change later: the home because a sale or an allocation follows, the debt because it is repaid. Keep them side by side, each with its own value now.

Ask the lender in writing for the outstanding debt on the date of death. Arrears, interest not yet debited, and a separate loan for a renovation belong on the debt line only if the specification names them. You do not estimate a remainder by reducing the original principal by the years you think have passed. That is calculating without a document. Put the loan number, the name it stands in and the date of the specification on the item. If the home is linked to more than one loan part, you make a line for each part, or you follow the split the bank itself uses on the specification. One total is allowed if the specification gives that total and you keep the specification.

A policy linked to the mortgage can repay part of the debt. That is no reason to cancel the home, the debt and the policy against each other. The payout follows the beneficiary designation. It can go to the lender, to a person, or partly fall outside the estate. Until the insurer states in writing which amount goes to whom, the policy remains a separate line with status requested. The mortgage remains the debt according to the bank's specification. Only once both amounts are known do you book a repayment as a movement: the debt falls by what was actually repaid, and the payout does not also still stand as free assets.

The value of the house on the date of death is not the WOZ value and is not automatically the later purchase price. A WOZ assessment may stand as a start, with year and source, until an estate agent gives an asking price or the sale is complete. The value of the home and the mortgage debt remain two lines even then. Selling costs are not the purchase price. Book them separately once they are fixed, and leave them out as long as you do not know them. The debt on the date of death does not change because the house is later sold for a different amount. What remains after the sale to repay the loan, you see in the course of events, not by rewriting the old debt.

None of these lines is a valuation or tax advice. Ervazo does not fix the value of the home and does not calculate the remaining debt. The source of the debt is the bank or the lender, in a specification as at the date of death. The source of a payout is the insurer. The source of a home value is the assessment, the estate agent or later the deed of sale, not a net sum you made yourself. What the Belastingdienst does with the home and the debt in a return follows from those documents and from the return, not from cancelling them against each other in the list.