KALP (kvar att leva på)

What KALP is

KALP stands for kvar att leva på, “left to live on”. It is how the bank works out whether you can carry a mortgage: it takes your income, subtracts tax, housing costs, interest and amortisation (the scheduled repayment of the loan), and looks at what remains. If the figure is positive, you pass on paper. If it is negative, the bank says no, no matter how nice the home is.

One detail matters: the interest in the calculation is not your actual rate. The bank uses a kalkylränta, a stress-test rate set higher than the real one, so that you would still cope if rates rose. Living costs (food, clothes, insurance, household electricity) are usually based on standardised reference figures, and they cover roughly 40 percent of a household’s spending on top of the home itself.

The number to know

There is no legal minimum for how much you must have left over. As a benchmark, the median surplus for new mortgage borrowers was just over 8,600 kr a month in 2024, up around 1,000 kr from the year before. Each bank sets its own kalkylränta and its own standard figures, so a yes at one bank can be a no at another.

What you do with it

Run your own rough KALP before you go to the bank: income after tax, minus housing cost, minus interest calculated high (be generous, add a few percent), minus amortisation, minus around 10,000-15,000 kr in living costs per adult. If you land clearly in the plus, you have margin. If you land near zero, the home is too expensive for your finances right now, and it is far better to know that before the bidding, not after. From 1 April 2026 a 10 percent kontantinsats (cash down payment) is enough instead of 15 percent, which lowers the hurdle to get in but not your monthly cost afterwards.