How to read your loan offer: principal, price, contribution fee and APR

After this line-by-line walkthrough, you will be able to read every single item in your own loan offer and see through the entries that are often overlooked. The contribution rate (bidragssats) and the price spread (kursskæring) are typically the ones that slip by in a hurry, and those are exactly what this article tackles. You should be able to go into your meeting with the adviser with precise questions instead of a pile of figures whose meaning you are not quite sure of.

Understanding your mortgage loan offer is very much about knowing what is actually open to negotiation. You cannot negotiate the contribution rate with the mortgage credit institutions (realkreditinstitutter), but the bank’s fees and the interest rate on any bank loan can often be moved.

Even a small difference in the APR (ÅOP) can cost tens of thousands of kroner over the term of the loan, so it pays to get at least three offers for the same amount and the same term on the same day. In other words, the offers must be comparable, or the figures will not tell you much.

A mortgage loan ties you in for many years and is expensive to change once signed, so a thorough review before you sign is the cheapest investment you can make. The rest of the article takes you through the offer, line by line.

How a mortgage loan offer is structured

A mortgage loan can never cover the full price of the home. The lender will lend you up to 80 % of the home’s value, and for a holiday home or second home, the limit is 75 %. You have to finance the rest in other ways.

Financing is typically split into three parts. You can borrow up to 80 % as a mortgage loan and 15 % as a bank loan, which leaves a down payment of at least 5 % from your own funds. For a holiday home the split changes: 75 % as a mortgage loan and 20 % as a bank loan, still with at least 5 % of your own. A concrete example makes this clear: if you buy a home for 1 million kr., you must pay at least 50.000 kr. yourself, i.e. the 5 %.

Once you have the framework clear, the offer itself is a series of lines, each telling you something different about the loan. These are the lines you will typically find in a loan offer:

• The principal (hovedstol) and the bond principal (obligationshovedstol) show how much you are borrowing and how much bond debt lies behind it.

• The interest rate shows what you pay to borrow the money, and whether it is fixed or variable.

• The contribution rate is the lender’s own charge for the loan, and it depends on the loan-to-value ratio and the type of loan.

• The payment before and after tax (ydelse) shows what you pay each month and how much the tax deduction really takes off.

• The repayment profile (afdragsprofil) tells you whether the loan is repaid steadily or whether you have an interest-only period.

• The APR (ÅOP) brings all the costs together in one figure, so you can compare offers across lenders.

Each of these lines is covered one by one in the sections that follow.

Bond principal explained: the difference between the loan amount and the amount paid out

The bond principal is the face value of the bonds behind your mortgage loan. It is not necessarily the same as the amount paid out to you. The lender sells the bonds on the market at a price (kurs) that fluctuates from day to day, so there can be a gap between what is recorded as debt and what lands in your account.

An example makes the gap concrete. On 22 September 2026, a 4 % fixed-rate loan with repayments had a price of 95,13. This means that for every 100 kr. of bond principal, you received 95,13 kr. paid out, before the price spread was deducted. So if you borrow 1 million kr. in bond principal, you receive around 951.300 kr., while the debt is still for the full million.

The price depends on the type of loan. On the same day, an F-kort loan with repayments had a price of 100,28, so here the bond principal was closer to the amount paid out than with the fixed-rate loan. At a price above 100, you actually receive slightly more than the face value of the bonds, while a price below 100 reduces the amount.

In the offer, find the line for the bond principal and compare it with the line ‘samlet udbetalt kreditbeløb’ (total credit amount paid out). The difference between the two figures shows how much disappears in price loss and price deductions before the money lands in your account.

Price, price spread and proceeds on mortgage loans

The price spread (kursskæring) is a deduction from the bond price that the lender takes when your loan is paid out. If you later redeem the loan by buying the bonds back, a surcharge is added to the price instead. This means that the price you see in the offer is not necessarily the price at which the loan is actually paid out to you. So find the line for the price spread in the offer and see how much it takes off the price. Then you will know how much smaller your proceeds will be than the bond price alone suggests.

The size of the price spread depends on the type of loan. It matters most for adjustable-rate loans, and above all for F1 loans, where the interest rate, and with it the price, is adjusted every year. For fixed-rate loans the price spread is smallest, because the loan does not have to be refinanced along the way.

The price spread is included in neither the interest rate nor the contribution rate, so part of the loan’s cost lies in the price. That makes it harder to compare on interest and contribution alone. So always compare the proceeds after the price spread, that is, the amount that actually lands in your account, rather than just interest and contribution.

Market prices on 22 September 2026 show how differently price and proceeds turn out depending on the type of loan:

• An F3 loan with repayments had an interest rate of 3,41 % and a price of 100.

• An F5 loan with repayments had an interest rate of 3,51 % and a price of 100.

• A 4 % fixed-rate loan with repayments had a price of 95,13.

The proceeds after the price spread are what you should set side by side when you compare offers.

Contribution rate: the small percentage that drives the big costs

The contribution rate is the lender’s own payment for lending you the money, and it goes not to the bond investors but to the mortgage credit institution itself. It is calculated on your outstanding debt each year, so it keeps pace as you pay the loan down. It is therefore an ongoing cost that you pay for as long as the loan runs.

The size of the contribution rate depends on how much of the home’s value you borrow against, which type of loan you choose, and whether or not the loan has repayments. The range is wide: from about 0,2 % a year on the part of a fixed-rate loan with repayments that lies below 40 % loan-to-value, to just over 2,5 % a year on the part of an F1 loan without repayments that lies between 60 and 80 % (price sheets, 2026). The higher the loan-to-value ratio, the higher the rate, and an interest-only loan costs more than one with repayments.

Because the rate is calculated on the outstanding debt, even small percentages mean large amounts. The table below shows what different contribution rates cost a year on a loan of 1 million kr.

The difference between the lowest and the highest rate in the table is 7.000 kr. a year on exactly the same loan amount. That is money that disappears every year over the term of the loan, without changing how much you have borrowed.

As a rule, the contribution rate cannot be negotiated, so this is not where you should spend your energy when you talk to your adviser. Instead, negotiate on the bank’s fees and the interest rate on any bank loan, where there is often something to be gained. The rates do vary between lenders, though, and in 2026 the total rate for a fixed-rate loan with repayments at 0-80 % loan-to-value is, for example, 0,5625 % at Jyske Realkredit and 0,4875 % at Totalkredit after the KundeKroner discount (price sheets of 1 July and 1 October 2026). It is not the rate you negotiate, but which lender you choose to borrow from.

Payment before and after tax: the monthly amount on the offer

The payment on a mortgage loan is made up of three things: interest, contribution and repayment. In the offer they are rarely listed separately but are usually combined into one monthly amount, which is generally stated before tax. That is the figure to keep an eye on, because it is the payment that comes out of your account every month.

A concrete example shows what the figures mean in practice. In a loan example from Realkredit Danmark dated 22 January 2026, the monthly payment was 10.913 kr. It was based on a borrowing rate (debitorrente) of 4,06 % and a contribution rate of 0,57 % on a payout of 2.000.596 kr. Both interest and contribution are included in the 10.913 kr., and the repayment is part of the amount too.

The difference between the payment before and after tax comes from the interest deduction (rentefradrag). How much you can actually deduct depends on your own finances, so you cannot simply read the figure off the offer and assume it applies to you. Instead, ask your adviser exactly what the deduction will be in your situation, because the rate is individual. That way you get a figure that fits you rather than an average.

Once you know your monthly payment, the next step is to see what happens if interest rates rise. So test the payment at an interest rate that is 1 percentage point higher and see whether you can still keep up. As a rule of thumb, the payment should be below 30-35 % of your net income after other loans. If you stay within that, you will have room in your budget even if interest rates go up one day.

Repayment profile and interest-only periods: how your debt takes shape over time

The term of a mortgage loan is typically 10-30 years, and the repayment profile shows how much of each payment goes towards repayment over time. If you choose a short term, the repayments are large from the start and the debt falls quickly. If you choose a long term, a larger share of the payment goes on interest at the beginning, and repayment only picks up speed later. The repayment profile is therefore not a fixed figure but a curve that changes over the life of the loan.

An interest-only period is a separate term that typically raises the contribution rate. The surcharge is 0-0,15 percentage points on the part of the loan below 60 % loan-to-value and 0,62-0,80 percentage points on the part above it (price sheets, 2026), so you pay an ongoing premium for the break in repayments that the term gives you. It is worth doing the sums, because the premium applies for as long as the loan is interest-only.

On 22 September 2026, a 4 % fixed-rate loan with an interest-only period of up to 30 years had a price of 92,58, against 95,13 with repayments. A lower price means you need a larger bond principal to get the same amount paid out, so the interest-only period costs you in both contribution and price.

But there are exceptions. Realkredit Danmark charges no interest-only surcharge on the part of new loans below 60 % loan-to-value, and at Totalkredit and Nordea Kredit the surcharge on fixed-rate loans in the same band is 0-0,05 percentage points (price sheets, 2026). So if you are below 60 % loan-to-value, an interest-only period often costs little or nothing extra in contribution.

That is why you should read the repayment profile as an active choice rather than a detail. An interest-only period can free up room in your budget here and now, but the deferred debt has to be paid later, and both contribution and price can make the break more expensive than it looks at first glance.

Total costs and APR on mortgage loans

The APR (ÅOP) is the figure that brings together the loan’s total annual costs as a percentage, including interest, contribution and fees. It is the only line in the offer where all the costs are added up into a single figure, which is why it is also the figure you should use when you compare offers across lenders. Interest and contribution on their own do not tell you enough when the fees have to be included too.

In the loan example from Realkredit Danmark dated 22 January 2026, the APR was 5,05 %. The same example had a credit amount paid out of 2.000.596 kr., a term of 30 years and a borrowing rate of 4,06 %.

The credit costs came to 1.795.871 kr., and the total repayment before tax ended up at 3.796.467 kr. You pay close to double the amount paid out over 30 years. That is not an argument against borrowing, but you should know the figure before you sign.

The APR range varies quite a bit depending on the type of loan you choose:

• Mortgage loans typically come in at 3,5-5,5 % over a term of 10-30 years.

• Bank loans typically come in at 3,8-6,5 % over a term of 5-30 years.

• Consumer loans typically come in at 6-12 % over a term of 1-7 years.

The mortgage loan has the lowest APR as well as a long term of up to 30 years. It is this combination that makes mortgage credit the cheapest way to finance a home, and it is worth bearing in mind when you weigh up how much of the home to finance with a bank loan rather than a mortgage loan.

However, the APR is not the only thing to look at when you compare. Contribution rates differ from lender to lender, and even a difference of a few tenths of a percentage point adds up to several thousand kroner a year on a large loan. So compare both the APR and the annual cost in kroner before you decide.

Questions for your adviser before you sign

Here are the questions you should ask your adviser about mortgage loans before you put your name to anything. They are worded so that you can take them straight into the meeting.

• How much can I borrow, which type of loan should I choose, and how much should I borrow in total?

• What does the loan cost each month, and can that change over the term?

• Can the contribution rate be raised, and what conditions apply to early repayment?

• Can I make flexible repayments or convert the loan later?

• Is price hedging (kurssikring) offered, and which mortgage bond is behind the loan?

Price hedging and the choice of bond are directly linked to the price you see in the offer, and therefore to how much you actually receive in proceeds.

Always read at least three actual loan offers, and ask the questions yourself, however comfortable you feel with the adviser’s answers.