What is new
Ziinga used to carry three separate mortgage calculators, each with its own formula and its own starting numbers. They are now one. The mortgage page and the payment tab on every listing share the same arithmetic and open on the same defaults.
What it assumes
- 20% down and 20 years, the common bank terms.
- 16.13% a year, the National Bank of Rwanda's average commercial lending rate for July 2026. It is the market's measured average, not a guess, and it is never left at zero.
Take a house listed at 370 million RWF. With 20% down the loan is 296 million RWF, and at 16.13% over 20 years the repayment is about 4.15 million RWF a month. At a rate of zero the same loan would look like 1.23 million a month, which is why the starting rate matters so much.
What banks publish, and what they do not
Most Rwandan banks publish no mortgage rate at all. Where a bank does publish one, Ziinga shows it with the date it was checked. Where it does not, the page says "on application" rather than inventing a figure. A plausible made-up rate is worse than none, because buyers budget on it.
The one published rate range on the page is Equity Bank Rwanda's plot purchase loan for Rwandans abroad: 15% to 18%, up to 10 years, financing up to 80% of the price. I&M Bank Rwanda publishes terms of up to 30 years but no rate. The central bank rate, 8.75% since August 2026, is shown for context only: it is the rate banks price from, not a mortgage rate.
The affordable housing scheme
For first-time buyers there is a government-backed scheme funded through the Development Bank of Rwanda (BRD). You apply through a partner lender, not BRD itself. The calculator checks the price of the home against the scheme's two tiers: homes up to 40 million RWF with a rate capped at 11%, and homes from 40 to 60 million RWF capped at 13%, both for up to 25 years. Income limits apply as well, so the page says a home may qualify, never that it does.
How much can you borrow?
The affordability section turns the question around: enter your gross monthly income and existing debt payments, and it shows the largest repayment you can carry, using the usual rule that loan payments should stay within 40% of income. An income of 1.5 million RWF with 200,000 of existing payments leaves room for about 400,000 RWF a month.
Kept honest
Rates are checked monthly. The page shows the day they were last checked and says so when they are more than 120 days old. Try it on a real listing from the homes for sale, or open the mortgage calculator directly.