Short answer: it is paid off at closing, out of the sale money, before you see a dollar. Your mortgage does not move to the buyer and it does not follow you to the next home — the sale retires it. Here is the order it happens in, and the two numbers that decide what you walk away with.
The balance on your statement is not what you owe on closing day. Before closing, your loan servicer issues a payoff quote: the full amount that retires the loan on a stated date — the balance plus interest through that date and any amounts still outstanding. The settlement agent orders it and runs the closing on it. If closing slips past the quote's good-through date, a fresh quote is issued; until then, you keep making your regular payments exactly as before.
On closing day the buyer's funds and their lender's funds land with the settlement agent — the title company or closing attorney. From that money the agent pays off your mortgage first, then any other loan secured by the home, then the selling costs agreed in the deal. What is left is your proceeds. After the payoff lands, the servicer records the release of its lien, so the buyer takes the home free of your loans and the chain of title stays clean.
Every loan secured by the home must be satisfied at the sale — a second mortgage is paid off like the first, and a home equity line of credit is paid off and closed: you cannot keep drawing on a home you no longer own. These balances are not a surprise cost; they are already inside the equity math — your equity is your value minus everything owed on the home, all of it, which is how Homeowner HQ's monthly update shows it.
The escrow balance your servicer holds for taxes and insurance is not part of the sale proceeds and does not pass to the buyer. After the loan is paid off, the servicer settles that account and any remaining balance comes back to you from the servicer, apart from the closing itself — ask your servicer how and when they return it on your loan, so you are not watching the wrong check.
A Homeowner HQ estimate is not an appraisal.
Your own agent sends a monthly value update from Homeowner HQ — the estimate, labeled as an estimate, with your equity beside it — and HQ runs on Amazon AWS. Realtors and lenders use the same HQ together: homeowners stay connected to their own agent, and the monthly trend is the honest way to watch what is moving the number.
Homeowners are always free. Realtors pay $25/mo to join and lenders join at the $5/mo founding rate, at any book size, with no setup fee; sending messages inside HQ is a $100/mo unlock ($125/mo total for realtors, $105/mo total for lenders). A lender-sponsored realtor joins for $0.
Homeowner HQ is an AI-powered marketing department for agents and lenders — a relationship and revenue engine, not a homeowner database. A homeowner's record routes them back to their own agent; it is never sold and never shown to lenders.