Some assets carry external loans that are not policy loans — a mortgage on a rental, a HELOC behind a primary, an SBA loan on a business, a margin loan on a brokerage account. Policy Stack tracks these as liabilities linked to the deployment.
Funding vs. Liabilities
These are two different records and they show up in different places:
- Funding sources describe how the asset was acquired — recorded once, in Step 4 of the Add Asset wizard. See Funding Sources for a New Asset for the full walkthrough.
- Liabilities describe ongoing loans attached to the asset — recorded on the deployment detail page and updated over time as balances and payments change.
A property bought with a policy loan and a mortgage has both: a policy loan funding source (recorded once at creation) and a mortgage liability (tracked on the detail page for the life of the loan).
Where Liabilities Appear
Policy Stack uses two surfaces for asset-attached loans, depending on the asset type:
- Real estate assets render a Financing card with property-specific tiles — current balance, monthly PITI (principal + interest + escrow), interest rate, and projected payoff date. Real estate has its own surface because mortgage tracking carries property-specific UX (PITI roll-up, equity built) that doesn't generalize cleanly to other asset classes.
- Every other asset type — business, equipment, syndication, promissory note, securities (stocks, ETFs, crypto, bonds, mutual funds, precious metals), and other — renders a Linked Liabilities card. The linked-liabilities card supports zero, one, or many loans per asset and shows the same key fields per row: current balance, monthly P&I, interest rate, and payoff.
A business asset with an SBA loan, a brokerage account with a margin loan, or a syndication with bridge financing all surface here. Land assets render in the linked-liabilities card as well, so a financed plot of farmland or raw land shows its loan.
What the Linked Liabilities Card Shows
The card header reads Linked Liabilities with the tooltip External debt secured against this asset (e.g., loans not backed by a policy). When the card is empty, it shows Link an external loan to track current balance, payments, and payoff timing with an Add liability button.
For each linked loan, the card lists:
- Name — your label for the loan
- Lender — the institution holding the loan
- Type — one of Mortgage, DSCR Loan, Hard Money, Private Money, HELOC, Commercial, Personal Loan, or Other
- Current balance — the most recent balance you've recorded, with an Actual data-source badge
- Monthly P&I — the principal-and-interest payment
- Interest rate — the current rate
- Payoff — the planned or projected payoff month and year
Each row links to View loan details for the full liability page where you record balance updates, payment history, and rate changes.
Adding a Liability
There are two paths — at create time inside the asset wizard, or from the asset detail page after the fact.
At Create Time (Real Estate)
The Add Asset wizard captures a mortgage in the same transaction when you add a real estate asset:
- Start Add Asset — choose Real estate in Step 1's type picker
- Step 2 — answer the mortgage question — the panel asks Is this property financed with a mortgage? Toggle to Yes.
- Fill in the mortgage details — original principal, current balance, interest rate, term months, monthly P&I, lender name, originated date
- Save the asset — Policy Stack creates the property and the linked mortgage liability in one operation. The mortgage appears in the property's Financing card immediately.
This in-wizard path exists because the older "Add liability later" flow buried the mortgage in a separate step that most users skipped, leaving leveraged properties recorded as if they were cash purchases. The Step 2 toggle keeps the mortgage attached from the beginning.
From the Detail Page (Any Asset Type)
For non-real-estate assets, or for adding a second liability to a property (e.g., a HELOC behind a primary mortgage):
- Open the deployment — navigate to Capital → Assets and click the asset
- Find the Linked Liabilities card — for non-real-estate assets it sits below the analysis section
- Click Add liability — opens the Add Liability dialog with the asset and ownership entity prefilled
- Fill in the loan details — name, lender, type, current balance, monthly payment, interest rate, and payoff schedule
- Save — the new row appears in the linked-liabilities list and is linked to this asset
For real estate, the Financing card has its own Add liability flow that links the loan to the property and surfaces it in the property-specific tiles.
Multiple Liabilities on One Asset
A property with a first mortgage and a HELOC, or a business with both an SBA loan and a line of credit, can record each as a separate row. Real estate currently surfaces the primary liability in the Financing card; the linked-liabilities pattern on other asset types lists all rows.
What Policy Stack Records
Liabilities are tracked records, not projections. Policy Stack stores what you enter, refreshes the displayed balance from your most recent update, and reconciles the row against your inputs. The Actual badge on current balance reflects the recorded value; the projected payoff date is computed from your contract terms (rate, term, payment, extra principal) when those values are present.
A liability linked to a deployment shows up on the asset detail page and on your Net Worth page. The two views read from the same record — a balance update on the liability page is reflected on the asset page on next load.