// accounting › Real Estate / Property
Projects a property's future value from an appreciation rate, shows the real (inflation-adjusted) value, and — in mortgage mode — the equity and the real return on your deposit.
Value = Price·(1 + g)^n ; Real value = Value / (1 + i)^n
It takes the price you paid (or would pay) today and grows it by an annual appreciation rate to estimate the property's value after a number of years. It then strips inflation back out to show what that future price is worth in today's money — the real value — so a rising number isn't mistaken for a genuine gain when it's only keeping pace with rising prices generally.
Nominal value is the sticker price in future dollars: price compounded by the appreciation rate. Real value deflates that figure by inflation to express it in today's dollars. If a property appreciates 5% a year while inflation runs 3%, the nominal value climbs steeply but the real value climbs only about 2% — and the gap between the two curves is the part that inflation quietly eats.
Simple projects one nominal curve and its real counterpart. Scenarios brackets the estimate with low, average and high appreciation bands (two percentage points either side), because no one knows the exact future rate. With Mortgage adds a deposit and loan, so instead of just the property's value it reports your equity — value minus the balance you still owe — and the real return on the cash you actually committed, which is the deposit.
The upper line is the nominal value rising over the years; the lower line is the real, inflation-adjusted value rising more gently. The shaded band between them is value lost to inflation. In Scenarios mode you instead see three nominal lines fanning out — low, average and high — showing how much the outcome depends on the rate you assume. In Mortgage mode the chart adds your growing equity.
Deciding whether to buy or keep renting — a $600,000 home at 5% appreciation is worth about $977,000 in ten years on paper, but nearer $727,000 in today's money after 3% inflation. Sanity-checking an agent's growth promise by seeing the real figure, not just the headline. And in mortgage mode, judging a deposit as an investment: a $120,000 deposit that becomes far larger equity can still post a modest real return once inflation and the remaining loan are counted. These are rough estimates, not valuations or financial advice.