Update: In Animal Crossing: New Horizons Update 1.60, released in November of 2020, the option to further upgrade your house’s storage was added, and it requires you to fully pay off your final home loan. So now there is a good reason to pay off that loan. This was not the case before patch 1.60.
The original article appears in its entirety below.
The Animal Crossing series has always put you into debt to a raccoon (or tanooki, actually) named Tom Nook. He offers you a home with the condition that you eventually pay off the mortgage. Every time you pay off a loan, Tom Nook will offer you a swanky upgrade for your home, which will put you ever deeper into Nook debt. But you’ll eventually hit a point where there are no more upgrades to offer, yet you’re left with one last mortgage of titanic proportions.
In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, there are seven home upgrades.
- The first upgrade is from a tent to a house.
- The second makes your space larger.
- The third adds a back room.
- The fourth adds a side room.
- The fifth adds an additional side room.
- The sixth adds an attic.
- The seventh, and final upgrade, adds a basement.
And that final loan payment is enormous, at almost 2.5 million bells. It will take most normal players a very long time to pay off this final mortgage.
So is it worth it? Quite frankly, no. The reward for paying it off is rather disappointing: Tom Nook will offer you free home exterior updates (limited to one per day). Since these updates cost 5,000 bells, you would need to upgrade your home 500 times before you’d spend 2.5 million bells. That’s an upgrade per day for almost a year and a half.
There is also no Nook Miles challenge for paying off the final loan, so you aren’t even rewarded with a paltry Nook Miles handout here.
The other home upgrades are absolutely worth it. Adding the basement increases your home’s storage slots to 1,600, and that alone is worth the enormous cost.
Plus, some of the older games gave you better rewards for completing the monumental task of paying off your final home loan. Animal Crossing for GameCube, for example, caused a statue to be erected in your honor. While that’s really just a vanity prize, at least it’s something. Tom Nook isn’t even trying this time.
So if you’re wondering whether or not you should pay off your final home loan in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I say no. Let that miserable raccoon (tanooki, I mean) forever ponder the regret of loaning you those bells, which he will never recover. And you can tell Tom Nook I said so.
(I did pay off my final loan, so…)
Thank god I read this because I was about to pay all of that 2.5 million bells
This comment made me actually laugh out loud because this is why I came here.
same here, was about to pay it off… like hell i will when i get no new House customisation, no new items nothing… That Tanuki can rot.
I actually thought it could make my house look like a castle😂
I’ll be sure to pay all of that off by Easter, or Memorial Day at the latest!
Life saver
I believe that paying off the loan now increases your storage again. This was changed in a patch long after I published this article!
Article has been updated to reflect the changes.
I think paying it off after 2.0 creates external house storage areas now.
if we don’t pay can you still move you’re mailbox
Yes, absolutely. Hit Y on your box as if you’re picking up an item 🙂