Loan term
What is loan term?
The loan term is the number of years over which the mortgage is scheduled to be repaid — most commonly 30 or 15 years in the US.
What it means in practice
A longer term lowers the monthly payment and raises total interest. A shorter term does the reverse and usually earns a lower rate.
The term matters most on a refinance, where resetting to a fresh 30 years can raise lifetime interest even though the rate fell.
Matching the new term to the years you have left avoids that reset, at the cost of a smaller payment reduction.