Mortgage Trivia
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100 free Mortgage trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
42 free fun mortgage trivia questions with answers, written for lender team meetings, real-estate office parties and anyone who has ever signed a 30-year note. It opens with the good stuff: why the word literally means 'death pledge', which town in 1775 saw the first building society, what a discount point actually buys you, and where the word escrow comes from. The middle section covers the institutions and the acronyms: FHA and the 3.5 percent down payment, the New Deal's HOLC and its infamous maps, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae, VA loans with nothing down, FICO's 300-to-850 range, adjustable-rate notation and reverse mortgages at 62. Then it turns to the 2007-2010 subprime crisis, NINJA loans, Lehman, Dodd-Frank and The Big Short, with a few pop-culture questions on It's a Wonderful Life and Monopoly to keep the room awake. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia before publishing and each question links to its source. Difficulty runs from easy to hard, so seasoned loan officers and first-time buyers can play the same round.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'mortgage' comes from a Law French term meaning what?
Death pledge
Mortgage comes from the Law French mort gage, a death pledge: the pledge 'dies' either when the debt is paid or when the borrower defaults and loses the property.
Q 02A buyer who puts 20 percent down has a mortgage with what loan-to-value ratio?
80%
Loan-to-value is the loan divided by the price, so 20 percent down leaves an 80% LTV; above 80% in the US or Canada, mortgage insurance is usually required.
Q 03In the early years of a standard amortising mortgage, most of each payment goes toward what?
Interest
Interest dominates the early payments because it is charged on the large outstanding balance; the split flips over time until the last payments are almost entirely principal.
Q 04What is the most common mortgage type in the United States?
The 30-year fixed rate
The 30-year fixed rate is the dominant US product, chosen by the large majority of American homebuyers; its monthly payment never changes over the full three decades.
Q 05What is a mortgage nicknamed when its balance falls due long before its payment schedule ends?
A balloon
Such a loan is a balloon mortgage: payments follow a long amortisation schedule, but the remaining balance falls due early. Before the FHA existed, most American mortgages were short balloon loans with big down payments.
Q 06Which mortgage type became closely tied to the mid-2000s subprime lending boom?
Interest-only
Interest-only loans let borrowers pay nothing toward principal for years, so they count on selling or refinancing before the whole balance comes due; they spread widely in the subprime boom.
Q 07Why can observant Muslims not use a conventional mortgage?
Sharia law forbids paying or receiving interest
Sharia law forbids paying or receiving interest, known as riba, so one workaround has the bank buy the house outright and act as landlord while the buyer pays it off.
Q 08What does mortgage insurance protect?
The lender against borrower default
Mortgage insurance covers the lender against borrower default: it is typically required on loans above 80 percent loan-to-value and reimburses the lender's loss after a foreclosure.
Q 09In mortgage jargon, one 'point' equals what?
1% of the loan amount
A point is 1% of the loan amount, so one point on a $300,000 mortgage costs $3,000; borrowers pay discount points up front to buy a lower rate.
Q 10A mortgage escrow account is used to pay which two costs?
Property taxes and insurance premiums
Property taxes and insurance premiums are collected in monthly instalments alongside the loan payment and held in escrow, so the servicer can pay the tax and insurance bills when they fall due.
Q 11The word 'escrow' derives from an Old French word for what?
A scroll or scrap of parchment
Escrow comes from Old French escroe, a scroll or scrap of parchment: the deed was written on it and held by a third party until the transaction was complete.
Q 12On an ARM, what is the 'teaser'?
A cheap introductory period
The teaser is a cheap introductory period with a below-market rate, often lasting one to five years; after it ends, caps limit how often and how far the rate can move.
Q 13Outside the United States, what is an ARM more commonly called?
A variable-rate or tracker
Q 21Which regulator placed both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship in September 2008?
The FHFA
The FHFA, the Federal Housing Finance Agency created only weeks earlier by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, took control on 7 September 2008 in one of the most sweeping interventions in private financial markets in decades.
Q 22Which government agency created and guaranteed the first mortgage-backed security in 1970?
Ginnie Mae
Ginnie Mae, the Government National Mortgage Association, guaranteed the first pass-through mortgage-backed security in 1970; its securities carry the full faith and credit of the US government.
Q 23VA home loans were created by which 1944 law?
The GI Bill
Abroad the product is a variable-rate or tracker mortgage, because the rate follows an index such as a central-bank base rate or, historically, LIBOR.
Q 14How old must a borrower be to take out an FHA-insured HECM reverse mortgage in the US?
62
Borrowers must be at least 62 to take a HECM. The first one went to Marjorie Mason of Kansas in 1989, a year after the programme was signed into law.
Q 15When was the Federal Housing Administration created?
1934
The National Housing Act of 1934 set up the FHA to insure private lenders' loans; it joined the newly created HUD in 1965.
Q 16What minimum down payment did the FHA set for its insured loans in January 2009?
3.5%
The 3.5% floor took effect in January 2009 under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, replacing the earlier 3 percent minimum investment.
Q 17Which 1968 law outlawed the redlining that FHA appraisal standards had encouraged?
The Fair Housing Act
The Fair Housing Act, Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, banned discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing; FHA guidance had once told appraisers to avoid 'inharmonious racial groups'.
Q 18The New Deal's HOLC, created in 1933, existed mainly to do what?
Refinance defaulted mortgages
The Home Owners' Loan Corporation was set up to refinance defaulted mortgages for owners facing foreclosure, making about a million loans by 1936; it also drew the colour-coded 'residential security' maps synonymous with redlining.
Q 19Fannie Mae was founded in which year as part of the New Deal?
1938
Founded in 1938 as the Federal National Mortgage Association, it bought FHA-insured loans from lenders; it was converted into a shareholder-owned company in 1968.
Q 20Freddie Mac was created in 1970 for what purpose?
To compete with Fannie Mae
Congress chartered the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation to compete with Fannie Mae and to give savings and loans a buyer for their conventional mortgages, widening the secondary market beyond government-insured loans.
The GI Bill, formally the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, created the VA loan guarantee, which allows eligible veterans to buy with no down payment and no private mortgage insurance in exchange for a funding fee.
Q 24What is the range of a classic FICO credit score?
300 to 850
Classic FICO scores run from 300 to 850; Fair, Isaac and Company introduced them in 1989, and the three bureaus launched rival VantageScore in 2006.
Q 25Which three national credit bureaus supply the data behind US mortgage credit checks?
Experian, Equifax and TransUnion
Experian, Equifax and TransUnion are the three national bureaus; mortgage lenders usually pull a tri-merge report from all three and underwrite on the middle of the three scores.
Q 26The world's first building society was founded in 1775 in which English city?
Birmingham
Ketley's Building Society was founded in Birmingham in 1775 by Richard Ketley, landlord of the Golden Cross inn; members pooled subscriptions to build houses for one another.
Q 27A building society differs from a bank in that it is owned by whom?
Its members
A building society is a mutual owned by its members, the savers and borrowers, rather than by shareholders; Abbey National kicked off the UK demutualisation wave when it converted to a bank in 1989.
Q 28In It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey runs what kind of institution in Bedford Falls?
A building and loan
George runs a building and loan, the Bailey Brothers' Building and Loan; Frank Capra's Christmas classic has James Stewart talking a panicked crowd out of a run on it while Mr. Potter circles.
Q 29In Monopoly, how much does the bank pay you when you mortgage an unimproved property?
Half its purchase price
The mortgage value printed on each deed is half its purchase price, so Mediterranean Avenue's $60 price mortgages for $30; any houses on the colour group must be sold back before a property can be mortgaged.
Q 30What surcharge does Monopoly add when you lift a mortgage?
10%
Lifting a mortgage costs the mortgage value plus a 10% charge, so a property mortgaged for $100 takes $110 to redeem, and its owner may not collect rent on it until it is lifted.