For housing, how does this compare/compete with NY Times' Buy or Rent calculator?<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calculator.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calcula...</a>
There's something strange with the math in general, and going from 29 years out to 30 specifically. I entered:<p>Income: 100k, rent 1250, other expenses 1250.<p>In year 29, the expenses on the owning side are $1,017k. Go to year 30, and they drop to $405k.<p>Also, I can't figure out where Net is calculated from. It seems like it should be Income + Home Equity - Expenses - Tax - Home Payments, but that doesn't add up.<p>This plus the fact that you assume non-home investments do no better than inflation makes this pretty questionable to me.
It's nice that you try to be inclusive with "partnered", but then you throw it all away by not supporting the likely tax filing status of gay couples: joint for state, not married for federal.<p>Honestly, that's the first question on the page and it looks like it was designed by some committee trying to find a compromise that offends the fewest people, with no concern for whether you're using the most common terms or whether your model actually fits the real world.
Between the 0% real rate of return on investments, 0% cost of selling your home, no HOAs, this seems to low-ball cost of ownership by at least 10%. Couldn't even come within 10 years of the NYTimes rent vs buy with my assumptions. Not to mention that this uses a 4% mortgage rate and then offers consumers 4.65% loans.<p>But when putting people in loans in the only way to monetize, it is going to be hard to give unbiased advice.
From the buy/rent calculator:<p><pre><code> RETURN ON SAVINGS: We assume the money you have saved
generates a return of 2%/year.
INFLATION: We assume a general rate of inflation on
your income and expenses of 2%/year.
</code></pre>
This seems unrealistic. What is the basis for these numbers? It seems to bias the buy/rent calculator pretty heavily towards buying.
I like it. One "bug":<p>I get a $50,000 reduction in the amount I can afford if I go from $0 debt to $500/month and $15,000 total outstanding debt.<p>Okay, maybe that makes sense since I'd have 2.5 years of reduced income to make payments with.<p>But, if I reduce the total outstanding to $500/month and $500 total outstanding, that $50,000 reduction doesn't change.<p>Edit: One more thing: on Topic 4, the interest rate and minimum down payment percentage do not seem to change when I change the FICO range. They are both 3.25% no matter which score, except for the lowest range (which states I couldn't qualify). Also, if you can find me someone who will give me a 3.25% loan with 3.25% down in California (I have near perfect credit and strong numbers), I will literally pay you $10k cash on the spot :) Maybe you should be pulling actual rates/amounts from what people have actually been able to get in certain areas? (You could pull this info straight off the recorded TDs).<p>Otherwise, really cool tool that's relatively easy to use and looks nice!
The decisions listed (buying a house, retiring, paying for college, etc) are all fairly infrequent, separated by many many years - so not much value from return users. I think getting $$$ from people for that is going to be very very tough unless they can quickly expand and become the "financial decision-making engine" for pretty much every $500+ purchase in your life.<p>If that's not in the cards, they must be thinking of (A) targeting intermediaries (e.g. mortgage people at banks to use with their clients), or maybe (B) planning something a-la-Mint (e.g. present you with relevant offers to whatever it is you're considering buying/leasing)... or maybe something else?<p>Curious to hear how you guys are planning to monetize...
Buy/rent calculators are definitely a great tool for homebuying assistance but we need more things like how what area to choose based on preferences (suggest me possible areas based on my preference?), should i really buy even if financially feasible (single vs. married couples etc), what is my possible job outlook or status in next 3-5 years, do i expect to move soon? if an app can take in all these factors along with financials, it could suggest something close enough.
Couple of questions<p>Is this Net Present value ?<p>Do you publish the calculations that got us there (I could not see it)<p>There seems to be some sensitivity to a few key variables (down payment?) - is there a write up of the algorithm (in plain english :-)<p>But its pretty good - I just chucked in my UK prices and guesstimated equivalent rental, but its quite a shock - I expected to see rental as a more expensive option much much earlier and by a wider margin. its 20 years before you start saying - well thats worth it.
The design of this site is really impressive. If you're working on a web product you should be taking notes.<p>Probably the #1 problem for a brand new site offering financial advice is to establish credibility. Lots of past entrants did a lousy job of this, but these guys have nailed it on day 1. Their site looks a lot like the NYT's info features, and it helps them look authoritative.
Would love to collaborate on a UK version of your Rent or Buy calculator for our users at OpenRent. Saves us writing one from scratch when you already have something so functional!<p>Unless of course someone knows of a decent one pre-calibrated for UK taxes already?
Looks like it will be good.<p>Seems to go very wrong when you can afford very high down payments.<p>Also tricky to use sliders on iPad.Would be good to allow direct numerical entry as option.<p>It should offer an existing home equity option with the available cash and gifts options.
I'll give you a piece of advice (take it for whatever you want) that you're not likely to get elsewhere.<p>People aren't stupid.<p>The dominant model in many online ventures is that in some sense the "user is the product", which they're selling to companies. There will be a huge natural push on you to sell a part in your user's "decisions" - you need to resist this, and then you will be ahead of 99.97% of web sites in your sector.<p>The term "Your trusted advisor" is all but meaningless online. Make yours have meaning. Then, you are not competing with the rest of the Internet (well, maybe with 0.03% of your niche) but instead with real trusted people, like financial advisers.<p>There is a lot of money there, and the Internet isn't getting any of it, because whereas people (rightly) pay for people in real life that they trust, people (rightly) don't go online for the same thing.