Updated August 13, 2026. Quick answer: there is no interest rate, so the cost hides in two parameters the marketing does not lead with: the starting value the gain is measured from, and the multiple applied to the share. Read from the providers’ own pages on 2026-08-13, the starting-value discount runs from zero to 15% across companies selling the same product, and one company’s share is four times what it put in. On the assumptions set out below, those two parameters move the annualised cost from 3.98% to 11.45%. The calculator runs it on your own numbers.
Two different products are sold under one name
Before any arithmetic, sort the offer into one of two boxes, because they are not variations — they are different transactions.
Some providers take a share of the whole house at the end. Hometap describes its own structure that way: “Hometap uses the share of home value model”. Unlock states the mechanics outright: “Unlock’s share of your equity is calculated by taking your home’s ending value and multiplying it by the Unlock percentage” Ending value, times a percentage. The starting value never enters the settlement formula.
Others take a share of the change in value, and repay the cash separately. Point: “Future appreciation is based on using the risk adjusted Appreciation Starting Value” Aspire is the same shape and says what happens when the change is negative: “If the Ending Property Value of your home is less than the Starting Property Value, then Aspire will share in that loss.”
Here is the part that is genuinely surprising, and it is arithmetic rather than opinion. If the cash you take equals the share the provider takes — $50,000 on a $500,000 home is 10% either way — and no discount is applied to the starting value, the two structures cost exactly the same. On the assumptions below both settle at $70,530. The structure is not where the money is. The money is in the two adjustments nobody puts on a billboard.
Adjustment one: the gain is measured from a number below your home’s value
A “risk adjustment” sounds like an underwriting nicety. It is the largest single cost driver in the contract, because it moves the line the gain is measured from. Every provider that uses one publishes a different number, and one publishes that it uses none at all.
| Provider | Discount applied to the starting value | In its own words |
|---|---|---|
| Unlock | none | “Unlock does not ever apply a discount to the home value determined by our valuation process.” |
| Unison | 5.0% | “we will then reduce that value by a 5.0% Risk Adjustment. The resulting value is called the Original Agreed Value.” |
| Aspire | 15% | “The starting property value includes a 15% risk adjustment to the appraised value, meaning the starting value used in your HEI agreement will be 15% less than the appraised value.” |
| Point | stated, but not quantified | “Your appreciation starting value will be a majority percentage of this appraised value.” |
Read the consequence rather than the number. If the clock starts 15% below today’s value, then on the day you sign, the provider is already owed a share of an “appreciation” that has not happened. Your house has to fall 15% before its share of the gain reaches zero. On Unison’s 5.0%, the house has to fall 5.0%. A flat market is not a break-even — it is a loss. On the assumptions below, with the home completely unchanged in value for ten years, the Unison-shaped deal still settles at $60,000 against $48,050 received — 2.25% a year for a house that did nothing. Point’s figure could not be established at all: “a majority percentage” is anything above half, and the gap between 51% and 99% is the whole cost of the deal.
Adjustment two: the share can be a multiple of what was invested
The second parameter is the one that turns a moderate deal into an expensive one, and it is stated plainly by the provider that uses it:
“Unison’s share is typically four times the percentage we invested.” — Unison, FAQ – sharing percentage
Put those two sentences together and the deal changes character. 10% of the house in cash buys the provider 40% of every dollar the house gains, measured from a line 5.0% below where it starts. Neither half of that is hidden — both are on the company’s own FAQ — but neither is a number a reader can turn into a cost without doing the arithmetic, which is what the rest of this page does.
What it actually costs, computed
One deal size, one holding period, one growth rate, four structures. The assumptions are stated so you can reject them: a $500,000 home, $50,000 taken in cash (10% of today’s value), held ten years, with the home growing 3.5% a year. Each row uses that provider’s own published fee and, where it publishes one, its own risk adjustment and multiplier. Nothing here is a quote for a real offer.
| Structure | Settled at | Cash you actually received | Cost of the money | Annualised |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Share of value, no discount | $70,530 | $47,750 | $22,780 | 3.98% |
| Share of appreciation, no discount | $70,530 | $47,750 | $22,780 | 3.98% |
| Appreciation with a 15% discount | $78,030 | $48,500 | $29,530 | 4.87% |
| Appreciation, 5.0% discount and a 4x share | $142,120 | $48,050 | $94,070 | 11.45% |
The first two rows are the same number, which is the point made above. The third and fourth rows are what the two adjustments do to it. The spread between the cheapest and dearest row is $71,590 on identical cash, an identical house and an identical decade.
One provider publishes an annualised cost. The rest do not.
Every figure in the table above had to be computed, because none of these companies publishes an annual percentage rate — and, as the comparison page explains, none of them has to. With one exception, found on Aspire’s own home page:
“Your cost at the end of the agreement is capped at 12% in first 3 years and 16% -18% thereafter (annualized, compounding monthly)” — Aspire, home page
That is a cost ceiling expressed the way a borrower can actually use it. Note what it also tells you: the company that discloses a rate discloses a capped one, and the cap it chose sits in the same range this page computed for the uncapped structures. It is worth asking any provider for the equivalent sentence in writing. Point states a cap exists without publishing its level; Unison’s applies only to an early exit. If a provider will not put a number on the ceiling, there is no ceiling you can rely on.
One state already requires the numbers this page had to compute
The four questions below are not this site’s invention. Washington wrote almost exactly them into its mortgage rules, and made them a written disclosure obligation with a deadline:
“Within three business days following receipt of a loan application for a shared appreciation mortgage, or a mortgage with a shared appreciation provision, in addition to the disclosures required by federal law or by this chapter, you must provide each borrower with a written disclosure containing at a minimum the following: (a) The percentage of shared equity or shared appreciation you will receive (or a formula for determining it); (b) The value the borrower will receive for sharing his or her equity or appreciation; (c) The conditions that will trigger the borrower’s duty to pay; (d) The conditions that may cause the lender to terminate the mortgage or shared appreciation provision early;” — WAC 208-620-510(6)
Read the first item again: the percentage of shared equity or shared appreciation you will receive, or a formula for determining it. That is the parameter Point does not quantify anywhere on its own site, and it is the single input this page could not fill for two of the providers. Connecticut went further and defined the product in its statute — “”Shared appreciation agreement” means a nonrecourse obligation in which an advance sum of monetary value is extended to a consumer, as a lump sum or otherwise, in exchange for an equity interest in a dwelling, residential real estate or a future obligation to r” — and then placed it inside the definition of a residential mortgage loan (Conn. Gen. Stat. § 36a-485(27)). Whether that reasoning travels is the subject of the comparison page. The practical point here is smaller and more useful: a homeowner in Washington is entitled to be handed the numbers this page had to derive. Everyone else has to ask for them.
The four questions that price any offer
Every number this page needed came from four questions. Ask them in writing, before an appraisal is ordered:
- Is your share taken from the value or from the change? One answer means the whole house is in the formula; the other means only the gain is.
- What is the starting value, in dollars, and how far below the appraisal is it? A percentage answer such as “a majority percentage” is not an answer.
- What multiple of your investment is your share? If the cash is 10% of the house and the share is not, the difference is the price.
- What is the cap, annualised? One company on this page answers that in a sentence. Treat the others’ silence as data.
Two fee notes worth having: Hometap “Hometap charges a fee equal to 4.5% of the Investment amount for processing the Investment, up to a maximum of $20,000.” and Unison “Unison will deduct a 3.9% transaction fee from your agreement at closing.” — both come off the cash before you receive it, which is why the “cash you actually received” column above is smaller than the headline. If the reason you are reading this is that a lender said no, the product being compared against is at HEA versus HELOC versus home equity loan. If someone has instead offered to buy the house and rent it back to you, that is a different transaction with its own record: the sale-leaseback decode.
What we could not establish, and are not going to invent
This page argues that the missing numbers are the story, so it states its own.
- Point’s starting-value discount could not be quantified. Its own page says the starting value is “a majority percentage” of the appraisal and never says which. We are not estimating it from a competitor’s number.
- Hometap’s and Unlock’s share percentages are not published — both are set per deal. The share used in the table is our stated assumption, not their term.
- Splitero could not be read at all. Every route to its own site returned a block, and its archived pages carry no substantive text. It is absent from this page rather than described from secondary sources.
- Unlock’s and Unison’s full product guides are image-only PDFs with no extractable text, so the contractual detail behind their FAQs was not read. Point’s cap level sits behind a login.
- The growth rate is an assumption, not a forecast. Every figure in the table moves with it, and the calculator exists so you can move it. Nobody, including us, knows what your house will do.
- No page here states a total cost for a real offer. Third-party closing costs, appraisal fees and state-law fee limits all vary and none of them is in this arithmetic.
Sources
Every term below was read on 2026-08-13 from the provider’s own published page — its FAQ, its how-it-works page or its home page — and quoted verbatim. No comparison site, review site or broker page was used for any figure, which matters here more than usual: those are the only other publishers of this table, and they are paid by the companies in it.
| What it establishes | Read at |
|---|---|
| Hometap takes a share of the home’s VALUE, not of the gain, and says so in its own words. | Hometap, FAQ |
| Hometap’s own fee, stated as a percentage with a dollar cap. | Hometap, FAQ |
| Unlock also takes a share of the ENDING VALUE of the whole house. | Unlock, FAQ |
| Unlock applies no discount to the starting value – the only provider found that says so expressly. | Unlock, FAQ |
| Point takes a share of APPRECIATION, measured from a risk-adjusted starting value. | Point, How it works |
| Point states that its starting value is below the appraised value, without publishing by how much. | Point, How it works |
| Unison’s share of the change in value is a MULTIPLE of the percentage it invested. | Unison, FAQ – sharing percentage |
| Unison discounts the appraised value by a stated 5.0% before appreciation is measured. | Unison, FAQ – starting value |
| Unison’s transaction fee, deducted at closing. | Unison, FAQ – costs |
| Aspire discounts the appraised value by 15% – the largest starting-value discount found. | Aspire, FAQ |
| Exactly one provider publishes an ANNUALIZED cost cap – the number every other provider’s marketing omits. | Aspire, home page |
| Aspire states it shares the loss if the home falls. | Aspire, How it works |
| Aspire’s processing fee. | Aspire, FAQ |
| Washington requires in writing, within three business days, exactly the terms these agreements otherwise do not publish. | WAC 208-620-510(6) |
| Connecticut defines the product itself, in statute – the only clean legal definition found. | Conn. Gen. Stat. § 36a-485(30) |
| Connecticut’s statute puts a shared appreciation agreement inside the definition of a residential mortgage loan. | Conn. Gen. Stat. § 36a-485(27) |
General consumer information, not financial or legal advice. Terms are as published by each provider on 2026-08-13 and change without notice; your own offer governs. The computed figures are illustrations on the assumptions stated on this page, not quotes, offers or predictions. Nothing is sold here and no provider is recommended.
Check the legal layer before comparing the math. Our home equity agreement rules by state guide shows which jurisdictions have treated these contracts as mortgage loans—and what silence elsewhere does and does not mean.