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Balloon payments and maturity dates
A maturity date is not an ending. It is a financing event with a date on it, and it is the most schedulable risk on a farm balance sheet.
Maturity versus amortization
A loan can amortize on a twenty-year schedule and mature in five. The payment is sized as though you had twenty years; the contract ends at five. Whatever principal remains at that point comes due. That remainder is the balloon, whether or not the document uses the word.
Why it must be shown separately
Folding a balloon into an average annual figure makes a loan look calm and produces a genuinely dangerous number. LoanHank keeps the regular scheduled service and the residual principal apart, and validates the residual it calculates against the balloon your document states. When those two do not reconcile within a tight tolerance, you get a limited X-Ray and a request for the corrected mechanics rather than a confident wrong answer.
Interest-only structures
An interest-only note pays the periodic interest and none of the principal, so the full balance arrives at the end. The regular payments look easy and the maturity is the whole loan. The projected interest is the sum of those payments, and the final year carries up to a year of interest plus the entire principal.
Reading the dates carefully
A payoff quote carries a “good through” date. That is the date the quoted figure stops being accurate — it is not the maturity date, and treating it as one shortens the loan on paper by years. This is a specific check LoanHank runs, because it is a specific mistake that is easy to make.
Watching the date
Saved loans can carry a maturity watch that notifies you at eighteen, twelve, six, three, and one month out. The notification says a loan needs attention and nothing more: no balance, no rate, no date, no scenario result travels in an email or a push message.