# Loan Estimate

> Loan Estimate turns borrower intent into a documented, priced loan file

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:real-estate-mortgage:origination:loan-estimate` |
| Family | Mortgage Origination |
| Domain | Technology |
| Era | Institutional Age → Agentic Age |
| Kind | financial-instrument |
| Archetype | The Claim |
| Claim layers | empirical, cultural_historical, synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory |

## What it is

Loan Estimate is a financial instrument in the Mortgage Origination family, defined here by the function it performs in the property system rather than by label alone.

## What it actually does

Loan Estimate turns borrower intent into a documented, priced loan file.

## Why it exists

It exists because place is unique and immovable while law, capital, information, and human lives must still coordinate around it across time.

## System mechanics

- **Who uses it:** owner, occupant, buyer, seller, lender, investor, steward, regulator
- **Incentives:** access to capital, yield, liquidity, risk allocation
- **Inputs:** capital, terms, collateral or cash flow, counterparties, risk assumptions
- **Outputs:** funding, cash-flow claims, obligations, risk allocation
- **Dependencies:** Land, Authority, Information, Capital, Time

## Archetypal reading

- **Essence:** Loan Estimate turns borrower intent into a documented, priced loan file
- **Gift:** Clarity about loan estimate makes a hidden allocation of place, time, authority, value, or risk available for deliberate choice.
- **Wound / Shadow:** When loan estimate is treated as neutral or inevitable, its costs can be shifted to people who hold less information, authority, liquidity, or mobility.
- **Failure mode:** The failure mode appears when loan estimate is stale, opaque, mispriced, misrecorded, overextended, or applied outside the conditions that made it useful.

## Lenses

- **Personal:** Notice where loan estimate appears as a structure in your own commitments: what is held, promised, priced, protected, excluded, or deferred?
- **Business:** Loan Estimate reveals a handoff among information, authority, incentives, operating work, and capital. Make the owner of each handoff explicit.
- **Financial:** Loan Estimate changes the timing, priority, comparability, liquidity, or distribution of cash flow and risk.
- **Property:** Loan Estimate changes how a physical place can be used, valued, financed, transferred, occupied, maintained, or reclaimed.
- **Community:** Loan Estimate can create benefits inside one parcel while exporting costs or opportunity to neighbors, institutions, or future residents.

## Divination

The Claim enters the reading through Loan Estimate. The issue is not only what is visible; it is which map of ownership, time, risk, authority, or belonging currently governs the situation.

**Question:** What future is being pledged through Loan Estimate, and who receives protection if conditions change?

**Guidance:** Separate access from cost, payment from principal, and temporary liquidity from permanent viability.

## Game function

Moves Capital now and creates a future Claim with explicit priority and failure consequences. Initiative 1.

## Relationships

- **Interest-Only Non-QM constrains Loan Estimate.** Interest-Only Non-QM constrains Loan Estimate through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.
- **Application transfers into Loan Estimate.** Application transfers into Loan Estimate through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.
- **Loan Estimate is governed by Rate Quote.** Loan Estimate is governed by Rate Quote through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.
- **Loan Estimate enables Debt-to-Income Ratio.** Loan Estimate enables Debt-to-Income Ratio through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.

## Oppositions

- Use Value versus Exchange Value
- Speed versus Diligence

## Historical lineage and regulatory context

Read Loan Estimate through the lineage of Mortgage Origination: earlier customary or local arrangements became recorded, standardized, financed, regulated, digitized, or contested over time.

Rules vary by jurisdiction and transaction. Use the cited primary sources as starting points and verify current local law, program guides, contracts, and professional standards before operational use.

## Visual direction

Text-free rounded-square enamel artifact for Loan Estimate: a luminous claim-line descending from a built form into layered earth and extending across a long brass timeline; vitreous midnight enamel, blackened steel, warm brass, copper accents, mortgage-paper cream, deep green, slate, and sky blue.

## Engine output / Sentinel handoff

The generative interpretation above is preserved as Engine Output. Sentinel factors: jurisdiction-specific rules, factual uncertainty. These factors request contextual review; they do not delete or silently rewrite the candidate.

## Research / provenance

- [Mortgage Resources](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/compliance/compliance-resources/mortgage-resources/) — Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; origination, disclosures, appraisal, servicing, mortgage regulation.
- [Fannie Mae Selling Guide](https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/media/document/pdf/selling-guide-february-4-2026) — Fannie Mae; loan eligibility, underwriting, appraisal, delivery.
- [MISMO Standards & Resources](https://www.mismo.org/standards-resources) — Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization; residential and commercial mortgage data standards.
