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Show HN: Free mortgage analysis tool to avoid getting screwed by closing costs

273 points by aaln 2y ago

kojeovo 2y ago
The privacy and security part is not inspiring confidence. Scrolling to the next section got me thinking "Don't get scammed at closing, get scammed before closing after uploading your mortgage documents to a random website." Cool idea though.
- aaln 2y ago
  Hey, Aaron the builder here. The scamming that happens to homebuyers is not even comparable to the risk in uploading docs to a website which promises they won't share user data with anyone. This is genuinely a pro buyer tool with no association with any 3rd party. The tool has already helped many people negotiate and get a better deal on their mortgage. Please before judging understand that 70% of buyers overpay in their mortgage 1-3% in closing costs and bad rates. It's mind boggling how much lenders get away with profiting in junk fees from stressed out homebuyers.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >The scamming that happens to homebuyers is not even comparable to the risk in uploading docs to a website which promises they won't share user data with anyone. Well as long as you promise, my privacy fears are allayed! /s
  - mannyv 2y ago
    Ignore the haters, they will probably never be your customer.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - effingwewt 2y ago
      Ah the Disney approach. Bold strategy Cotton. Owner did the smart thing and listened to the constructive criticism which made me feel infinitely better about using his tool. Which I will now do, and would not have before. I am also his exact customer.
      - KPGv2 2y ago
        > Ah the Disney approach. Bold strategy Cotton. The Disney approach, if successful, would make you very rich. Their approach has made them one of the most powerful companies in the world.
    - ziddoap 2y ago
      People are trying to increase the potential customer base of the author by pointing out where there is room to improve. That is incredibly valuable, and one of the major reasons to do a Show HN. That is not being a "hater".
      - cj 2y ago
        The percentage of regular people who care about any of the risks discussed in this thread is approximately zero. For better or worse. Your typical home buyer isn't reading the contract they sign when they buy a home, let alone the privacy policy of a simple tool they use to check if they have a mortgage with decent terms.
        ziddoap 2y ago
        When people who do care about privacy and security make their voices heard, such as the case here where the owner has committed to improving their policy & processes, it benefits everyone using the product or service.
        cj 2y ago
        It’s not in the spirit of a “Show HN” to attack the guy’s privacy policy and shut down the idea over security concerns that the general public wouldn’t think twice about.
        ziddoap 2y ago
        No one "attacked" the author. The first comment said "not inspiring confidence" and then WaitWaitWha gave a very thoughtful comment with actionable advice, based on that comment and the reply. These are not attacks.
      - fragmede 2y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42150219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42150219 was highly constructive. It was direct and actionable. kojeovo's original comment was less so. When you build a product, you're going to get random, in-actionable comments from people who just like to complain. Separating the signal from noise is difficult, and while there is a underlying concern about privacy, not giving anything actionable moves it towards to the noise side of the spectrum.
  - bredren 2y ago
    It is fair to describe the pains of not getting analysis on mortgage loan estimates, but what I think folks are looking for is some kind of authentic answer to the problem posed. For example, you could advise the person uploading to remove PII prior to the upload, and link to pdf editing tools that allow them to do that. You could say that not including PII like full name(s) found on just about every loan estimate does not take away from the value of the tool. Another thing that could be done is to provide clear means for removing any data uploaded, or opt-out pre-upload of any data being used for training. For example by creating an account first. Providing some skin in the game such as putting the removal behavior in the terms of service and a personal guarantee to do everything to ensure sensitivity to privacy of this information will be handled carefully staking your reputation, probably would help.
    - aaln 2y ago
      Thank you for these suggestions, I'm going to advise users to remove PII before uploading and eventually allow users to purge their data.
  - WaitWaitWha 2y ago
    Allow me to expound on @kojeovo's remark. Please take this as a constructive criticism to improve your success potential. Much of it is from a quick glance, and am sure there are many other facets to improve. A business is not just about the product. Your Privacy Policy. There is no default way to download it (see 9.), and since it is window-ed cannot print entire doc. That means I cannot keep a copy of it for myself. > We collect the following types of information: > Mortgage Documents: Loan Estimates and Closing Disclosures you upload for analysis. Okay, but > 4. Data Security > We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your information from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. This means nothing. Are you ISO 27001:2022, NIST SP 800-53, CIS, CE+, Essential Eight, or something else? Have you been audited, and proof? Who is your ISP? What regs do you follow around data sovereignty? Terms of Service. Again, no default way of download. Overall, I would never agree to this ToS. It demands all kinds of requirements on the user, but takes no responsibility for anything - or as described above, explain how you will protect your customers. You have no reference anywhere where you are geographically. No address, no about us, no who you are. I would be very leery on uploading anything.
    - mmh0000 2y ago
      Would it matter if they had a "perfect" privacy policy? I don't believe there's anything legally that enforces it. So they can promise the moon then turn around and sell your data. Maybe I'm wrong here, but, My mental model of privacy policies and the like has always been: This is a lie, the company will do whatever it wants with my data. And I will have no recourse. As such I've always acted accordingly. And very few websites have legit info on me.
      - T4iga 2y ago
        I think acting 'as if' is the safe option here but encouraging change for the better in someone willing to engage in dialog is still better than not doing it. Maybe you didn't intend to make a counterpoint, i just wanted to point that out.
    - adamtaylor_13 2y ago
      Legitimately curious, what’s the worst they could do with this data?
  - swatcoder 2y ago
    FYI, this reads as a very aggressive response to someone raising legitimate privacy concerns and doesn't engender the trust you very likely deserve. Rather than talking up the value of the tool as superceding the concerns, a more constructive approach might acknowledge the concerns and emphasize how you already do minimize risk or commitments you're willing to make towards doing so. Being dismissive doesn't help worried or skeptical people feel more secure, and worried and skeptical people make perfectly good users too.
    - monktastic1 2y ago
      Interesting. I didn't read it as aggressive, and certainly not "very" aggressive. I read it as polite and perhaps mildly defensive. What about the response suggests aggression to you?
  - jjav 2y ago
    > not even comparable to the risk in uploading docs to a website which promises they won't share user data with anyone. This is genuinely a pro buyer tool with no association with any 3rd party. I have no reason to think you're not completely sincere in this! But, realize it doesn't mean anything. Unless that promise is backed by some ironclad contract, it means nothing. Companies grow and hire new people who don't care about the original values. Or they get acquired and all bets are off. Or they start running low on cash and suddenly decide monetizing all that data is a good idea after all. Or it becomes visible enough to attract attention of the government who shows up demanding copies of data. And so on. I've been in one or more startups where all of these things have happened.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - dylan604 2y ago
    Also, you have no control over decisions that any future owner might have, and you won't care because you've already cashed out. What happens when you get hacked? Not if. To come back at someone with valid concerns with a "no, you don't understand my point of view" does nothing but a disservice to you. Expecting people to just accept things is just not a good way to operate. When you receive push back, you need better responses than this. Will the vast majority of your users push back, sadly, probably not. However, you did post this to HN and then reacted poorly to valid criticism. Tsk tsk
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    I love this idea (haven't tried it) and it seems like a killer app for AI. I can think of a lot of other things like health insurance, home owners insurance, and many other types of contracts for which an AI advisor can be built for. Imagine being able to rake over a complex document and make decisions that clearly benefit you. That's a rare privilege.
  - egorfine 2y ago
    I am genuinely surprised by the comments in this thread. Privacy concerns are real but the importance of that matter in your project is overestimated here by an absurd level. What I read is not a constructive criticism and the suggestions laid down are not realistic nor business relevant at all. I feel like this is some sort of mass wishful thinking.
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      Title deposit wire fraud is a very big risk. The amounts are devastating to the victims, so the operator has to go above and beyond to secure the data because of the huge risks involved. Would you risk losing a 5-/6-digit amount to fraud in order to potentially save on a 4-digit closing fee?
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      I think it's actually refreshing to see the top comments and constructive criticism be about privacy concerns. It shows that even for little "Show HN" projects, there is growing intolerance of half-assing it. Not saying OP in particular is half-assing it, but it's good to see these questions being regularly asked front and center. I honestly wish the Tech Media paid more attention to privacy and security instead of just copy-pasting companies' PR statements as "articles."
      - paulcole 2y ago
        My opinion is that the OP shouldn’t even half-ass it. Ignore anybody who has complaints about privacy and 0-ass it. People just love complaining and telling other people The Right Way To Do Things.
        kojeovo 2y ago
        As the OP, I wasn't even complaining about privacy of the app or site per se. It was just feedback on how that part of the landing page copy made me, a potential consumer of the product (I'm in the process of buying a house rn) made me feel in the moment. Could be a quick copy change to fix.
  - bastloing 2y ago
    Doesn't matter your promise, even though you may or may not be trusted, hackers can get it and steal it all. So it's not necessarily you or your service.
  - chourobin 2y ago
    Great idea and execution. I understand the privacy concerns, but I believe implementing a client-side redaction step could alleviate some of them. This step would allow users to preview their uploaded content before submitting it. While designing this feature, it’s crucial to ensure user trust and convince them of its benefits. Personally, I would feel more comfortable uploading a PDF knowing that it will be anonymized or redacted before being submitted.
  - mgaunard 2y ago
    How can you get scammed on a mortgage? They're typically standard products from nationwide banks.
  - stevebmark 2y ago
    Your response is a lighthouse sized red flashing light to never use your tool.
  - kojeovo 2y ago
    Hey. I really don't care to compare the level of scamming nor the usefulness of the tool. I'm in the process of buying right now so I know it could be useful. That's besides the point. To clarify, here's a different thought. Reading the following copy, I am wondering "whats gonna happen to my data / file I upload?": > We never sell or share data with third parties. All information is used solely to generate analyses to help borrowers analyze and optimize their mortgages. I even looked further into the privacy policy, just to be diligent here. > We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your information from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. With how much info I have been provided, I'm just not gonna upload a document to your site. Like I said, just doesn't inspire confidence as I scroll your landing page. Could just be a copy change to fix this.
- 293984j29384 2y ago
  What sensitive data do you think is on a loan estimate? I've received a dozen over the years and it's literally just your name and the address of the property you want to buy. Both of which are public information if you do purchase the property.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    Public info that you bought a property is entirely different from info about all the properties you are searching for and seriously considering. Especially being able to couple that with what you eventually did later.
    - parsimo2010 2y ago
      If you're uploading a loan estimate you've already made a loan application for a specific house- this isn't going to give them information on every house you were considering, it is probably just the single house which accepted your offer and are shopping around for financing.
    - 293984j29384 2y ago
      Why would a name and a random property address have value before the transaction, but not after it?
      - sangnoir 2y ago
        Well, one is before they spend a lot of money, and the other is after. In only one of those scenarios are they prone to spear-phishing wire fraud on the Title deposit. The victim is already primed, and has indicated they have gobs of money set aside.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    We're talking about enough information to create a list of people who are in the process of making the largest purchase of their lives, coupled with the name of the businesses that they're considering sending money to and the exact dollar amounts that they're considering sending. Scammers pay a lot of money to people who can get them those kinds of lists.
lawls 2y ago
I uploaded a mortgage I know well, and the results were pretty accurate.
- aaln 2y ago
  Thanks, did you see any interesting insights you're comfortable sharing?
  - lawls 2y ago
    I was really just testing that the system works. I gave it a VA Home Loan and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary in the analysis.
niyogi 2y ago
here, take my data but tell me nothing about yourself.
- aaln 2y ago
  It's a really new tool I quickly launched last week, there's a terms of service and privacy policy that gives info. https://closing.wtf/terms-of-service https://closing.wtf/terms-of-service https://closing.wtf/privacy-policy https://closing.wtf/privacy-policy I plan to go through SOC 2 / other compliancy certification in the near future. Happy to answer other questions
  - trollbridge 2y ago
    What, exactly, does SOC 2 have to do with anything? Can you answer the question of why this tool doesn’t work when redacting irrelevant personal information? I took my own info, redacted personal information you don’t need, and it doesn’t work.
    - aaln 2y ago
      The upload often doesn't work with redacted information because redacting sometimes changes the pdf's structure and can make the text extraction less reliable. I'm working on making the pdf processing more resilient.
brendanjbond 2y ago
I once knew a founder of a pre-GPT-3 AI product that analyzed certain cost-adjacent documents to find "hidden" optimizations. The "AI" was the founder, an expert in that industry, churning through the uploaded documents himself and writing reports by hand detailing potential cost savings. How far we've come!
- _yb2s 2y ago
  Some people suspect that is still how many of the AI startups operate
  - simfree 2y ago
    If there are only a handful of operators in a given industry and they use the same billing format, why not? Create a known good OCR to calculation mechanism, then generate reports based off it. If it is inaccurate, its probably a small amount of logic to fix it. With GPT you could even get it to write the parsing logic for you perhaps, and maybe process bill data when a bill doesn't exactly match existing parser data.
  - shermantanktop 2y ago
    Reminds me of Mechanical Turk's old tagline: "Artificial Artificial Intelligence"
shazmal 2y ago
Just checked out the tool it looks really interesting can definitely see the tremendous value to the standard consumer.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
thinkxl 2y ago
i don't want to be the "get off my lawn" person or "old man yells at cloud," but i couldn't get to what the tool does because the landing page is so overwhelming with colors, the background, the borders, things moving around. the CTA buttons across the site are inconsistent in shape, form, and color. the text color in the footer has awful contrast, so it's hard to read.
- giarc 2y ago
  >the text color in the footer has awful contrast, so it's hard to read. Dark grey on white is awful contrast these days?
  - deathanatos 2y ago
    … I'm not them, but in dark mode, it's <50% grey on black, and for the headers, <32% grey on black. (#374151 on black, I think.)
    - giarc 2y ago
      Dark mode. There's your problem. The site has been up for a week and people are already complaining they haven't properly adjusted for dark mode users. https://memelogy-images.s3.amazonaws.com/b004cc18-b980-4e4e-9ddb-6baf6aa02b65.jpg https://memelogy-images.s3.amazonaws.com/b004cc18-b980-4e4e-...
- aaln 2y ago
  Thanks for the feedback old man! I'm going to improve the aesthetic of the dark mode. You can try the light mode which should be easier to read right now.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
yungporko 2y ago
[flagged]
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
  Par for the course on HN. You just gotta have thickskin and learn to acknowledge the comments without wholesale accepting them. Some nitpicks are great, some are flat out stupid. When it's your product you have the benefit of deciding which is which for your product (and accept the consequences, of course).
JimA 2y ago
I tried it out with docs from my last refi. Tried both PDF and PNG files, both returned "An error occurred with processing your document. Please confirm you uploaded a valid Loan Estimate or Closing Disclosure PDF." I also at first didn't notice there is action needed to choose between uploading a Loan Estimate vs Closing Disclosure. It doesn't seem insurmountable to have the site automatically figure out the difference between those two.
- aaln 2y ago
  You're right. I just haven't gotten around to figuring out the document type automatically even though it should be straightforward to implement. There are many reasons the document will fail processing, it's usually because the wrong document type was selected or the original pdf from the lender has been modified. Sometimes, users upload a document they received which is just random text in a pdf they received as a pre-offer from a mortgage broker or lender.
samteeeee 2y ago
This looks really useful. I'll definitely be using this in the near future. However, I unnecessarily downloaded the sample loan estimate PDF and uploaded it again in order to view the report. Please make the "view sample report" button more prominent, or add another "view sample report" button within the blue "Try it out!" box.
avanwyk 2y ago
This is great. Really good work. This looks really useful, and I think you did a great job on the interface and site in general. I hope you aren't discouraged by the other commenters, keep hacking!
- aaln 2y ago
  Thank you!
- _dark_matter_ 2y ago
  Was going to say the same. I ran into the same problems when I bought my first house and spent tens of hours trying to untangle and reduce costs. Thank you for tackling this
  - aaln 2y ago
    Your welcome, thank you for the message.
jdcampolargo 2y ago
this is great!!! Thanks so much for making this! How are you handling the distribution?
- aaln 2y ago
  hacker news, reddit, and other communities. Hopefully there will be a strong incentive in the future for real estate agents or mortgage brokers to recommend the tool. Also I think the name closing.wtf will be good for distribution.
chasebank 2y ago
I wish I had this for payment processing.
jdcampolargo 2y ago
Something that would be useful would be exporting to PDF with the whole report so you could send it to your realtor / lender, etc!
- jdcampolargo 2y ago
  right now ive been trying to export the PDF but it's annoying
  - aaln 2y ago
    Going to work on this feature and ship it early next week if you're still in the closing process then.
- aaln 2y ago
  Thanks for mentioning this, I'm prioritizing this as a feature!
Onavo 2y ago
What's the PDF parsing like?
- aaln 2y ago
  Extract all the text from the PDF, turn the pdf into images, send the text for each page along with the image to an LLM with a desired output strucutre.
  - Onavo 2y ago
    You are not doing any of the fancy table extractor stuff?
sccomps 2y ago
why upload the actual document? why not let users enter only numbers?
- aorloff 2y ago
  Because it is an (likely illegal) lead gen scam You can see they have a page for mortgage lenders to sign up for the other side
SamuelAdams 2y ago
This seems odd. If you need certain fees and line items explained to you, why not ask your lender? Surely you have a loan officer that can explain every item and why it is there. If you don’t like some of the costs, go with another lender, or negotiate those with your loan officer. I’m not sure what this tool is offering that individuals don’t already have.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- aaln 2y ago
  This is supposed to be the role of the mortgage broker / loan officer. However in practice it's more complicated. Homebuyers receive these documents after they already signed a binding contract to purchase. Most people don't even know what questions to ask, much less how to properly negotiate, and they're under the stress of just getting the deal done which include affording a down payment, getting a home appraisal, and making sure they're not getting into a bad deal. Also throughout the closing, the real estate agent/mortgage broker/lender aren't incentivized to get the buyer the best deal; they usually just want to close. In general the mortgage broker/lender are not going to advise and how the customer how to shop around since it's technically illegal for them to give a "bad" loan to a buyer.
- a_w_king 2y ago
  A set of mortgage documents can have over 100 pages and include 20+ fees. It can be difficult for a borrower/homebuyer to understand all these fees, and most have no idea if they're competitive. Loan officers or brokers aren't incentivized to get you the lowest rates on every line item. Sounds like this tool helps you understand if you're being overcharged.
doctorpangloss 2y ago
I don't get it. What is the difference between: I want to pay less I want to pay less, and here's a document an AI wrote for me The scenario you've outlined doesn't make sense. It sounds like your goal is to collect these idiosyncratic documents. Which is also unusual - like why do the documents matter? What is the purpose?
- aaln 2y ago
  The analysis is generated via ~15 prompts and the output is pretty useful if you're going through buying a property with a mortgage. The goal is to help mortgage borrowers get better deals on their mortgage. All mortgage terms are outlined in the loan estimate and closing disclosure documents as required by the CFPB (consumer financial protection bureau) - https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/loan-estimate https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/loan-estimate The tool requires uploading these documents since they have all the data needed to generate the analysis on the mortgage. Technically I can have the user paste in all the data via a textbox, but then it would be much more difficult to reliably parse. Also requiring the upload of the original documents is a much cleaner experience.
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
    > The goal is to help mortgage borrowers get better deals on their mortgage. I don't get it. Better, LendingTree, Credible, Bankrate, and a dozen other firms all aggregate mortgages. If there are some "best" mortgages in absolute terms, show them, you don't need anything on the form to do that; if there are offers that have lower upfront costs in exchange for higher rates, because the buyer is sensitive to upfront costs, show them. Why do you need to see the document in order to give the user what he wants? Since you already know all of this, it begs the question: why do you specifically want to collect these documents? I'm not saying there is some conspiracy or anything.
    - asdasdsddd 2y ago
      The things you're mentioning allows you to compare mostly rates and points, but they don't do anything for origination or third party fees which can vary wildly from lender to lender. These fees MUST be disclosed in the loan estimate or the closing disclosure and its pretty much the only place you'll find them
freeone3000 2y ago
Hey. I ended up with an error saying my PDF could not be processed? But it’s my final loan disclosure form… Also, I’m not entirely sure what costs this avoids? Inspection fees are already paid at this point, notary fees are paid to your broker, and transfer tax happens months later.
- asdasdsddd 2y ago
  Most of the variance is in origination charges and title fees afaik. For example, borrower title insurance which is usually option can cost like 5k.
- aaln 2y ago
  I ran out of anthropic credits, I just refilled and the service works well now
cool_dude85 2y ago
Not wanting to upload my info here, but what, concretely, does this tool do? Does it scan to see if some of the fees I am agreeing to are higher than average? If I am paying for some services that should be no-cost or have no real value?
- aaln 2y ago
  The tool analyzes mortgage loan estimates and closing disclosures to find every potential place a buyer might be overpaying, every negotiable fee, and show the buyer a comprehensive AI analysis so they don't get screwed over and can have peace of mind on buying their home. When I was closing on a house, I called a few friends to help review my mortgage, and we found lots of mistakes. For example, I was getting charged transfer tax, which didn’t make sense for Florida where the seller typically pays that. The deeper I dug, the more I realized how much gray area there is with these documents - what’s negotiable, what’s inflated, what's normal in the property's jurisdiction, and what’s just non-competitive but seems ok since there's a lot of simplified complexity that goes into mortgages and what's an extra 1-3% on a mortgage that's "just going to be refinanced in 6 months" when interest rates go down.
pronouncedjerry 2y ago
Just mining data. Please flag this.
aoppaol 2y ago
Good job on the product and launching @aaln! I can see it being useful for many home buyers. I’m curious if AI tools like this are just wrappers around ChatGPT? Do they use their own LLM? If you upload mortgage documents directly to ChatGPT can you get similar results?
- aaln 2y ago
  Thank you @aoppaol! AI tools like this don't generally need their own models or fine tuned LLMs. Uploading mortgage documents to ChatGPT may get some useful results but it really won't be comprehensive, it most probably won't take into account jurisdictional laws and mortgages rate data, and would be hard(er) to trust because of hallucinations without guardrails. Technically this is an LLM wrapper but it utilizes around 5-10 prompts to extract and structure data from the document and ~15 prompts to analyze.
  - aoppaol 2y ago
    Thank you for the explanation. As a LLM wrapper (is it wrapped around ChatGPT?) would you say what makes your product unique is the specific prompts you have designed? Again, great job! Planning, building and launching should always be commended!
paul7986 2y ago
I use http://AimLoan.com http://AimLoan.com! Every detail right is there for you to see including closing costs for whichever interest rate you decide to go with.
virtualneuro 2y ago
I redacted my personal information from my loan estimate and your system couldn't process it. I don't see why you need that information to pull the closing cost numbers?
- aaln 2y ago
  The processing could fail for a bunch of reasons. I'm working on making the upload more fault tolerant including of redacted information.
siscia 2y ago
Congrats on the launch! A bit unrelated question, but what is the fastest way to obtain a similar looks and feel for the UI? Is there a framework?
nxnxhxnxhz 2y ago
[flagged]
trollbridge 2y ago
A side business I have is people who contact me because they just got scammed or need help knowing if something is a scam. One of the things I tell them is to never upload financial documents containing personal information unless: - The company they’re uploading it to is well known like a major bank and the domain in the address bar matches. - They know the company they’re dealing with - which means a business address at a minimum and preferably a phone number. - Avoid anything which claims to save money or be necessary which has a call to action to start uploading personal, documents. This site fails all 3 tests. I was able to find the founder via the name and LinkedIn link. But at least put up a legitimate business name and something like a PO Box. Registering a business name is $35 where this developer is located. A PO Box is around $80 a year. The name “closing.wtf” doesn’t seem to be registered with the state as a legitimate business. These are all red flags to “avoid”. If you’d like a free cybersecurity analysis of your site, I’d be happy to offer a few free expert consulting hours to aain. Reply here and I’ll contact you on LinkedIn.
- telgareith 2y ago
  A DBA (doing business as) is $35. And not worth the paper its printed on if not filed by an actual entity... which cost $300+. AND you have to give some new nebulous federal entity because "money laundering," or sometimes "OFAC enforcement."
  - Arainach 2y ago
    No one should be handing out their address, mortgage information, and other sensitive details to someone who can't spend at least $300 on the bare minimum appearance of legitimacy.
    - aaln 2y ago
      Thank you for the feedback. I'm working on all the points @trollbridge and you @Arainach have mentioned.
- aaln 2y ago
  Hi @trollbridge, thank you for the valid points. I'm glad to take you up on your consulting offer.
eitally 2y ago
This is essentially the inverse of how big banks are using commercial AI tools for document entity extraction and analysis. For example, https://cloud.google.com/solutions/lending-doc-ai?hl=en https://cloud.google.com/solutions/lending-doc-ai?hl=en I can see why this could be useful, but I also think it might be overkill compared to just an explanatory doc a homebuyer could reference that explains each section of their estimate. It also opens the developer to loads of potential risk in handling personal financial data.
fredgrott 2y ago
hmm, I just read the terms of service.... ahem get a damn lawyer to redo it before you get sued my some State AG.... in this area you cross all t's and dot i's before launch rather than half ass-launch right into a lawsuit.
aorloff 2y ago
What actions can you take by the time you are at closing ? I'm a licensed real estate agent, I actually got my license not just to learn about the business but to be able to save myself on agent commissions if I want to make an offer (if you can pass a CS data structures class you should be able to get a real estate license online in a matter of months), and I still would not try to optimize on closing costs. Do I shop loans ? Absolutely. Are closing costs a scam ? Absolutely. Would I try to optimize closing costs in the context of making a purchase ? No. In the time you have to decide the one really important question (whether to proceed or not) you need to spent it understanding the worst possible parts of the transaction you are about to make, NOT focusing on the closing costs. Some class action lawyers should be worrying about optimizing these fees. Shop your loan, but spend your time investigating the property. Pretending to be a site helping mortgage borrowers not get scammed while actually being a mortgage lead gen portal though : chef's kiss.
- apinstein 2y ago
  hmm. I don't see why not optimize closing costs. I have done so on 4-5 mortgages myself. When sourcing your lending options, if you are a good borrower at least, you will have multiple options. I always asked for a full closing cost estimate and compared. Usually saved $2000-5000 through a combination of: - effectively shopping around items like title insurance, appraisals, etc by pointing out differences b/c competing vendors - identifying BS items that are not even on all offers, and simply having them removed. people like to add bogus fee lines. For sure doing this as lead-gen is great. Agree that there is a huge risk of uploading personal info -- in the future local AI's will be able to do this. In the short term, they should partner with a known brand to give credibility.
  - aorloff 2y ago
    This business is a thinly veiled mortgage lead gen scam Its going on nearly 20 years I have been watching this train wreck
karaterobot 2y ago
If I'm interested in paying an expert to look at the settlement cost estimates and find areas where I might be getting screwed, or could negotiate to save on closing costs, is that a thing? What's the title for a professional human who does what this AI tool says it does? It sounds useful, I'd just rather pay a person for this service.
yboris 2y ago
Related: mortgage VS investments calculator Shows a graph in your terminal: find out if it's better to put in a smaller downpayment and invest the rest. https://github.com/whyboris/mortgage-and-investments https://github.com/whyboris/mortgage-and-investments
yboris 2y ago
Mortgage life hack: pay bi-weekly to pay off mortgage faster while paying less money! https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/bi-weekly-mortgage-calculator/ https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/bi-weekly-mortgage-calcul...
mnahkies 2y ago
There's a number of threads here about privacy/security concerns. I'm curious what should be the bar for grassroots/bootstrapped projects like this? Having recently taken a company through ISO 27001:2022 it's a pretty expensive and time consuming process, that doesn't seem reasonable to do early on in a projects creation - you don't yet know if you have product market fit. However, you're wanting people or companies to trust you with their data - so it starts to feel a little chicken/egg What's the best middle ground here for building trust whilst acquiring your first users?
- ISO27Auditor 2y ago
  ISO 27001 implementation and certification doesn't have to be overly expensive if you have the right team to help you. It also doesn't have to be time consuming as you can outsource a good deal of the work. I work as ISO 27001 auditor and I help companies get ISO certified. For a small company the combined cost of certification and external provider support ranges from $5k to $8k. Of course if you are a larger organisation the cost will go up, but not drastically.
  - mnahkies 2y ago
    That makes sense, but simply isn't viable cost wise IMO if you're trying to bootstrap a side project - until you have your first users and a sense that you have something people are willing to pay for, spending thousands on compliance certifications seems pretty risky. I'm interested in what the best strategy to build/establish trust when you can't yet afford to pay for certification is.
jzone3 2y ago
Hmmmm. On one hand "closing.wtf" definitely stands out... So many startups have boring branding. But on the other hand, you are building in a legacy space. It's important to build trust & pay attention to the feedback here. Does your target demographic understand "startups" or do they just want to solve the problem?
- aaln 2y ago
  Target demographic are regular people of all types who want to afford a home and have a quality life. All either have the problem now or had in the past and are curious if they got a good deal.
barrosamanda198 2y ago
[dead]
tomcam 2y ago
My favorite closing cost for the house I sold in February was $43,000 in excise tax to the city

273 points by aaln 2y ago

The privacy and security part is not inspiring confidence. Scrolling to the next section got me thinking "Don't get scammed at closing, get scammed before closing after uploading your mortgage documents to a random website." Cool idea though.

aaln 2y ago
Hey, Aaron the builder here. The scamming that happens to homebuyers is not even comparable to the risk in uploading docs to a website which promises they won't share user data with anyone. This is genuinely a pro buyer tool with no association with any 3rd party. The tool has already helped many people negotiate and get a better deal on their mortgage. Please before judging understand that 70% of buyers overpay in their mortgage 1-3% in closing costs and bad rates. It's mind boggling how much lenders get away with profiting in junk fees from stressed out homebuyers.
- gruez 2y ago
  >The scamming that happens to homebuyers is not even comparable to the risk in uploading docs to a website which promises they won't share user data with anyone. Well as long as you promise, my privacy fears are allayed! /s
- mannyv 2y ago
  Ignore the haters, they will probably never be your customer.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - effingwewt 2y ago
    Ah the Disney approach. Bold strategy Cotton. Owner did the smart thing and listened to the constructive criticism which made me feel infinitely better about using his tool. Which I will now do, and would not have before. I am also his exact customer.
    - KPGv2 2y ago
      > Ah the Disney approach. Bold strategy Cotton. The Disney approach, if successful, would make you very rich. Their approach has made them one of the most powerful companies in the world.
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    People are trying to increase the potential customer base of the author by pointing out where there is room to improve. That is incredibly valuable, and one of the major reasons to do a Show HN. That is not being a "hater".
    - cj 2y ago
      The percentage of regular people who care about any of the risks discussed in this thread is approximately zero. For better or worse. Your typical home buyer isn't reading the contract they sign when they buy a home, let alone the privacy policy of a simple tool they use to check if they have a mortgage with decent terms.
      - ziddoap 2y ago
        When people who do care about privacy and security make their voices heard, such as the case here where the owner has committed to improving their policy & processes, it benefits everyone using the product or service.
        cj 2y ago
        It’s not in the spirit of a “Show HN” to attack the guy’s privacy policy and shut down the idea over security concerns that the general public wouldn’t think twice about.
        ziddoap 2y ago
        No one "attacked" the author. The first comment said "not inspiring confidence" and then WaitWaitWha gave a very thoughtful comment with actionable advice, based on that comment and the reply. These are not attacks.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42150219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42150219 was highly constructive. It was direct and actionable. kojeovo's original comment was less so. When you build a product, you're going to get random, in-actionable comments from people who just like to complain. Separating the signal from noise is difficult, and while there is a underlying concern about privacy, not giving anything actionable moves it towards to the noise side of the spectrum.
- bredren 2y ago
  It is fair to describe the pains of not getting analysis on mortgage loan estimates, but what I think folks are looking for is some kind of authentic answer to the problem posed. For example, you could advise the person uploading to remove PII prior to the upload, and link to pdf editing tools that allow them to do that. You could say that not including PII like full name(s) found on just about every loan estimate does not take away from the value of the tool. Another thing that could be done is to provide clear means for removing any data uploaded, or opt-out pre-upload of any data being used for training. For example by creating an account first. Providing some skin in the game such as putting the removal behavior in the terms of service and a personal guarantee to do everything to ensure sensitivity to privacy of this information will be handled carefully staking your reputation, probably would help.
  - aaln 2y ago
    Thank you for these suggestions, I'm going to advise users to remove PII before uploading and eventually allow users to purge their data.
- WaitWaitWha 2y ago
  Allow me to expound on @kojeovo's remark. Please take this as a constructive criticism to improve your success potential. Much of it is from a quick glance, and am sure there are many other facets to improve. A business is not just about the product. Your Privacy Policy. There is no default way to download it (see 9.), and since it is window-ed cannot print entire doc. That means I cannot keep a copy of it for myself. > We collect the following types of information: > Mortgage Documents: Loan Estimates and Closing Disclosures you upload for analysis. Okay, but > 4. Data Security > We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your information from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. This means nothing. Are you ISO 27001:2022, NIST SP 800-53, CIS, CE+, Essential Eight, or something else? Have you been audited, and proof? Who is your ISP? What regs do you follow around data sovereignty? Terms of Service. Again, no default way of download. Overall, I would never agree to this ToS. It demands all kinds of requirements on the user, but takes no responsibility for anything - or as described above, explain how you will protect your customers. You have no reference anywhere where you are geographically. No address, no about us, no who you are. I would be very leery on uploading anything.
  - mmh0000 2y ago
    Would it matter if they had a "perfect" privacy policy? I don't believe there's anything legally that enforces it. So they can promise the moon then turn around and sell your data. Maybe I'm wrong here, but, My mental model of privacy policies and the like has always been: This is a lie, the company will do whatever it wants with my data. And I will have no recourse. As such I've always acted accordingly. And very few websites have legit info on me.
    - T4iga 2y ago
      I think acting 'as if' is the safe option here but encouraging change for the better in someone willing to engage in dialog is still better than not doing it. Maybe you didn't intend to make a counterpoint, i just wanted to point that out.
  - adamtaylor_13 2y ago
    Legitimately curious, what’s the worst they could do with this data?
- swatcoder 2y ago
  FYI, this reads as a very aggressive response to someone raising legitimate privacy concerns and doesn't engender the trust you very likely deserve. Rather than talking up the value of the tool as superceding the concerns, a more constructive approach might acknowledge the concerns and emphasize how you already do minimize risk or commitments you're willing to make towards doing so. Being dismissive doesn't help worried or skeptical people feel more secure, and worried and skeptical people make perfectly good users too.
  - monktastic1 2y ago
    Interesting. I didn't read it as aggressive, and certainly not "very" aggressive. I read it as polite and perhaps mildly defensive. What about the response suggests aggression to you?
- jjav 2y ago
  > not even comparable to the risk in uploading docs to a website which promises they won't share user data with anyone. This is genuinely a pro buyer tool with no association with any 3rd party. I have no reason to think you're not completely sincere in this! But, realize it doesn't mean anything. Unless that promise is backed by some ironclad contract, it means nothing. Companies grow and hire new people who don't care about the original values. Or they get acquired and all bets are off. Or they start running low on cash and suddenly decide monetizing all that data is a good idea after all. Or it becomes visible enough to attract attention of the government who shows up demanding copies of data. And so on. I've been in one or more startups where all of these things have happened.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- dylan604 2y ago
  Also, you have no control over decisions that any future owner might have, and you won't care because you've already cashed out. What happens when you get hacked? Not if. To come back at someone with valid concerns with a "no, you don't understand my point of view" does nothing but a disservice to you. Expecting people to just accept things is just not a good way to operate. When you receive push back, you need better responses than this. Will the vast majority of your users push back, sadly, probably not. However, you did post this to HN and then reacted poorly to valid criticism. Tsk tsk
- datavirtue 2y ago
  I love this idea (haven't tried it) and it seems like a killer app for AI. I can think of a lot of other things like health insurance, home owners insurance, and many other types of contracts for which an AI advisor can be built for. Imagine being able to rake over a complex document and make decisions that clearly benefit you. That's a rare privilege.
- egorfine 2y ago
  I am genuinely surprised by the comments in this thread. Privacy concerns are real but the importance of that matter in your project is overestimated here by an absurd level. What I read is not a constructive criticism and the suggestions laid down are not realistic nor business relevant at all. I feel like this is some sort of mass wishful thinking.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    Title deposit wire fraud is a very big risk. The amounts are devastating to the victims, so the operator has to go above and beyond to secure the data because of the huge risks involved. Would you risk losing a 5-/6-digit amount to fraud in order to potentially save on a 4-digit closing fee?
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    I think it's actually refreshing to see the top comments and constructive criticism be about privacy concerns. It shows that even for little "Show HN" projects, there is growing intolerance of half-assing it. Not saying OP in particular is half-assing it, but it's good to see these questions being regularly asked front and center. I honestly wish the Tech Media paid more attention to privacy and security instead of just copy-pasting companies' PR statements as "articles."
    - paulcole 2y ago
      My opinion is that the OP shouldn’t even half-ass it. Ignore anybody who has complaints about privacy and 0-ass it. People just love complaining and telling other people The Right Way To Do Things.
      - kojeovo 2y ago
        As the OP, I wasn't even complaining about privacy of the app or site per se. It was just feedback on how that part of the landing page copy made me, a potential consumer of the product (I'm in the process of buying a house rn) made me feel in the moment. Could be a quick copy change to fix.
- bastloing 2y ago
  Doesn't matter your promise, even though you may or may not be trusted, hackers can get it and steal it all. So it's not necessarily you or your service.
- chourobin 2y ago
  Great idea and execution. I understand the privacy concerns, but I believe implementing a client-side redaction step could alleviate some of them. This step would allow users to preview their uploaded content before submitting it. While designing this feature, it’s crucial to ensure user trust and convince them of its benefits. Personally, I would feel more comfortable uploading a PDF knowing that it will be anonymized or redacted before being submitted.
- mgaunard 2y ago
  How can you get scammed on a mortgage? They're typically standard products from nationwide banks.
- stevebmark 2y ago
  Your response is a lighthouse sized red flashing light to never use your tool.
- kojeovo 2y ago
  Hey. I really don't care to compare the level of scamming nor the usefulness of the tool. I'm in the process of buying right now so I know it could be useful. That's besides the point. To clarify, here's a different thought. Reading the following copy, I am wondering "whats gonna happen to my data / file I upload?": > We never sell or share data with third parties. All information is used solely to generate analyses to help borrowers analyze and optimize their mortgages. I even looked further into the privacy policy, just to be diligent here. > We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your information from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. With how much info I have been provided, I'm just not gonna upload a document to your site. Like I said, just doesn't inspire confidence as I scroll your landing page. Could just be a copy change to fix this.
293984j29384 2y ago
What sensitive data do you think is on a loan estimate? I've received a dozen over the years and it's literally just your name and the address of the property you want to buy. Both of which are public information if you do purchase the property.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  Public info that you bought a property is entirely different from info about all the properties you are searching for and seriously considering. Especially being able to couple that with what you eventually did later.
  - parsimo2010 2y ago
    If you're uploading a loan estimate you've already made a loan application for a specific house- this isn't going to give them information on every house you were considering, it is probably just the single house which accepted your offer and are shopping around for financing.
  - 293984j29384 2y ago
    Why would a name and a random property address have value before the transaction, but not after it?
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      Well, one is before they spend a lot of money, and the other is after. In only one of those scenarios are they prone to spear-phishing wire fraud on the Title deposit. The victim is already primed, and has indicated they have gobs of money set aside.
- lolinder 2y ago
  We're talking about enough information to create a list of people who are in the process of making the largest purchase of their lives, coupled with the name of the businesses that they're considering sending money to and the exact dollar amounts that they're considering sending. Scammers pay a lot of money to people who can get them those kinds of lists.

lawls 2y ago

I uploaded a mortgage I know well, and the results were pretty accurate.

aaln 2y ago
Thanks, did you see any interesting insights you're comfortable sharing?
- lawls 2y ago
  I was really just testing that the system works. I gave it a VA Home Loan and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary in the analysis.

niyogi 2y ago

here, take my data but tell me nothing about yourself.

aaln 2y ago
It's a really new tool I quickly launched last week, there's a terms of service and privacy policy that gives info. https://closing.wtf/terms-of-service https://closing.wtf/terms-of-service https://closing.wtf/privacy-policy https://closing.wtf/privacy-policy I plan to go through SOC 2 / other compliancy certification in the near future. Happy to answer other questions
- trollbridge 2y ago
  What, exactly, does SOC 2 have to do with anything? Can you answer the question of why this tool doesn’t work when redacting irrelevant personal information? I took my own info, redacted personal information you don’t need, and it doesn’t work.
  - aaln 2y ago
    The upload often doesn't work with redacted information because redacting sometimes changes the pdf's structure and can make the text extraction less reliable. I'm working on making the pdf processing more resilient.

brendanjbond 2y ago

I once knew a founder of a pre-GPT-3 AI product that analyzed certain cost-adjacent documents to find "hidden" optimizations. The "AI" was the founder, an expert in that industry, churning through the uploaded documents himself and writing reports by hand detailing potential cost savings. How far we've come!

_yb2s 2y ago
Some people suspect that is still how many of the AI startups operate
- simfree 2y ago
  If there are only a handful of operators in a given industry and they use the same billing format, why not? Create a known good OCR to calculation mechanism, then generate reports based off it. If it is inaccurate, its probably a small amount of logic to fix it. With GPT you could even get it to write the parsing logic for you perhaps, and maybe process bill data when a bill doesn't exactly match existing parser data.
- shermantanktop 2y ago
  Reminds me of Mechanical Turk's old tagline: "Artificial Artificial Intelligence"

shazmal 2y ago

Just checked out the tool it looks really interesting can definitely see the tremendous value to the standard consumer.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

thinkxl 2y ago

i don't want to be the "get off my lawn" person or "old man yells at cloud," but i couldn't get to what the tool does because the landing page is so overwhelming with colors, the background, the borders, things moving around. the CTA buttons across the site are inconsistent in shape, form, and color. the text color in the footer has awful contrast, so it's hard to read.

giarc 2y ago
>the text color in the footer has awful contrast, so it's hard to read. Dark grey on white is awful contrast these days?
- deathanatos 2y ago
  … I'm not them, but in dark mode, it's <50% grey on black, and for the headers, <32% grey on black. (#374151 on black, I think.)
  - giarc 2y ago
    Dark mode. There's your problem. The site has been up for a week and people are already complaining they haven't properly adjusted for dark mode users. https://memelogy-images.s3.amazonaws.com/b004cc18-b980-4e4e-9ddb-6baf6aa02b65.jpg https://memelogy-images.s3.amazonaws.com/b004cc18-b980-4e4e-...
aaln 2y ago
Thanks for the feedback old man! I'm going to improve the aesthetic of the dark mode. You can try the light mode which should be easier to read right now.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

yungporko 2y ago

[flagged]

beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
Par for the course on HN. You just gotta have thickskin and learn to acknowledge the comments without wholesale accepting them. Some nitpicks are great, some are flat out stupid. When it's your product you have the benefit of deciding which is which for your product (and accept the consequences, of course).

JimA 2y ago

I tried it out with docs from my last refi. Tried both PDF and PNG files, both returned "An error occurred with processing your document. Please confirm you uploaded a valid Loan Estimate or Closing Disclosure PDF." I also at first didn't notice there is action needed to choose between uploading a Loan Estimate vs Closing Disclosure. It doesn't seem insurmountable to have the site automatically figure out the difference between those two.

aaln 2y ago
You're right. I just haven't gotten around to figuring out the document type automatically even though it should be straightforward to implement. There are many reasons the document will fail processing, it's usually because the wrong document type was selected or the original pdf from the lender has been modified. Sometimes, users upload a document they received which is just random text in a pdf they received as a pre-offer from a mortgage broker or lender.

samteeeee 2y ago

This looks really useful. I'll definitely be using this in the near future. However, I unnecessarily downloaded the sample loan estimate PDF and uploaded it again in order to view the report. Please make the "view sample report" button more prominent, or add another "view sample report" button within the blue "Try it out!" box.

avanwyk 2y ago

This is great. Really good work. This looks really useful, and I think you did a great job on the interface and site in general. I hope you aren't discouraged by the other commenters, keep hacking!

aaln 2y ago
Thank you!
_dark_matter_ 2y ago
Was going to say the same. I ran into the same problems when I bought my first house and spent tens of hours trying to untangle and reduce costs. Thank you for tackling this
- aaln 2y ago
  Your welcome, thank you for the message.

jdcampolargo 2y ago

this is great!!! Thanks so much for making this! How are you handling the distribution?

aaln 2y ago
hacker news, reddit, and other communities. Hopefully there will be a strong incentive in the future for real estate agents or mortgage brokers to recommend the tool. Also I think the name closing.wtf will be good for distribution.

chasebank 2y ago

I wish I had this for payment processing.

jdcampolargo 2y ago

Something that would be useful would be exporting to PDF with the whole report so you could send it to your realtor / lender, etc!

jdcampolargo 2y ago
right now ive been trying to export the PDF but it's annoying
- aaln 2y ago
  Going to work on this feature and ship it early next week if you're still in the closing process then.
aaln 2y ago
Thanks for mentioning this, I'm prioritizing this as a feature!

Onavo 2y ago

What's the PDF parsing like?

aaln 2y ago
Extract all the text from the PDF, turn the pdf into images, send the text for each page along with the image to an LLM with a desired output strucutre.
- Onavo 2y ago
  You are not doing any of the fancy table extractor stuff?

sccomps 2y ago

why upload the actual document? why not let users enter only numbers?

aorloff 2y ago
Because it is an (likely illegal) lead gen scam You can see they have a page for mortgage lenders to sign up for the other side

SamuelAdams 2y ago

This seems odd. If you need certain fees and line items explained to you, why not ask your lender? Surely you have a loan officer that can explain every item and why it is there. If you don’t like some of the costs, go with another lender, or negotiate those with your loan officer. I’m not sure what this tool is offering that individuals don’t already have.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
aaln 2y ago
This is supposed to be the role of the mortgage broker / loan officer. However in practice it's more complicated. Homebuyers receive these documents after they already signed a binding contract to purchase. Most people don't even know what questions to ask, much less how to properly negotiate, and they're under the stress of just getting the deal done which include affording a down payment, getting a home appraisal, and making sure they're not getting into a bad deal. Also throughout the closing, the real estate agent/mortgage broker/lender aren't incentivized to get the buyer the best deal; they usually just want to close. In general the mortgage broker/lender are not going to advise and how the customer how to shop around since it's technically illegal for them to give a "bad" loan to a buyer.
a_w_king 2y ago
A set of mortgage documents can have over 100 pages and include 20+ fees. It can be difficult for a borrower/homebuyer to understand all these fees, and most have no idea if they're competitive. Loan officers or brokers aren't incentivized to get you the lowest rates on every line item. Sounds like this tool helps you understand if you're being overcharged.

doctorpangloss 2y ago

I don't get it. What is the difference between: I want to pay less I want to pay less, and here's a document an AI wrote for me The scenario you've outlined doesn't make sense. It sounds like your goal is to collect these idiosyncratic documents. Which is also unusual - like why do the documents matter? What is the purpose?

aaln 2y ago
The analysis is generated via ~15 prompts and the output is pretty useful if you're going through buying a property with a mortgage. The goal is to help mortgage borrowers get better deals on their mortgage. All mortgage terms are outlined in the loan estimate and closing disclosure documents as required by the CFPB (consumer financial protection bureau) - https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/loan-estimate https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/loan-estimate The tool requires uploading these documents since they have all the data needed to generate the analysis on the mortgage. Technically I can have the user paste in all the data via a textbox, but then it would be much more difficult to reliably parse. Also requiring the upload of the original documents is a much cleaner experience.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  > The goal is to help mortgage borrowers get better deals on their mortgage. I don't get it. Better, LendingTree, Credible, Bankrate, and a dozen other firms all aggregate mortgages. If there are some "best" mortgages in absolute terms, show them, you don't need anything on the form to do that; if there are offers that have lower upfront costs in exchange for higher rates, because the buyer is sensitive to upfront costs, show them. Why do you need to see the document in order to give the user what he wants? Since you already know all of this, it begs the question: why do you specifically want to collect these documents? I'm not saying there is some conspiracy or anything.
  - asdasdsddd 2y ago
    The things you're mentioning allows you to compare mostly rates and points, but they don't do anything for origination or third party fees which can vary wildly from lender to lender. These fees MUST be disclosed in the loan estimate or the closing disclosure and its pretty much the only place you'll find them

freeone3000 2y ago

Hey. I ended up with an error saying my PDF could not be processed? But it’s my final loan disclosure form… Also, I’m not entirely sure what costs this avoids? Inspection fees are already paid at this point, notary fees are paid to your broker, and transfer tax happens months later.

asdasdsddd 2y ago
Most of the variance is in origination charges and title fees afaik. For example, borrower title insurance which is usually option can cost like 5k.
aaln 2y ago
I ran out of anthropic credits, I just refilled and the service works well now

cool_dude85 2y ago

Not wanting to upload my info here, but what, concretely, does this tool do? Does it scan to see if some of the fees I am agreeing to are higher than average? If I am paying for some services that should be no-cost or have no real value?

aaln 2y ago
The tool analyzes mortgage loan estimates and closing disclosures to find every potential place a buyer might be overpaying, every negotiable fee, and show the buyer a comprehensive AI analysis so they don't get screwed over and can have peace of mind on buying their home. When I was closing on a house, I called a few friends to help review my mortgage, and we found lots of mistakes. For example, I was getting charged transfer tax, which didn’t make sense for Florida where the seller typically pays that. The deeper I dug, the more I realized how much gray area there is with these documents - what’s negotiable, what’s inflated, what's normal in the property's jurisdiction, and what’s just non-competitive but seems ok since there's a lot of simplified complexity that goes into mortgages and what's an extra 1-3% on a mortgage that's "just going to be refinanced in 6 months" when interest rates go down.

pronouncedjerry 2y ago

Just mining data. Please flag this.

aoppaol 2y ago

Good job on the product and launching @aaln! I can see it being useful for many home buyers. I’m curious if AI tools like this are just wrappers around ChatGPT? Do they use their own LLM? If you upload mortgage documents directly to ChatGPT can you get similar results?

aaln 2y ago
Thank you @aoppaol! AI tools like this don't generally need their own models or fine tuned LLMs. Uploading mortgage documents to ChatGPT may get some useful results but it really won't be comprehensive, it most probably won't take into account jurisdictional laws and mortgages rate data, and would be hard(er) to trust because of hallucinations without guardrails. Technically this is an LLM wrapper but it utilizes around 5-10 prompts to extract and structure data from the document and ~15 prompts to analyze.
- aoppaol 2y ago
  Thank you for the explanation. As a LLM wrapper (is it wrapped around ChatGPT?) would you say what makes your product unique is the specific prompts you have designed? Again, great job! Planning, building and launching should always be commended!

paul7986 2y ago

I use http://AimLoan.com http://AimLoan.com! Every detail right is there for you to see including closing costs for whichever interest rate you decide to go with.

virtualneuro 2y ago

I redacted my personal information from my loan estimate and your system couldn't process it. I don't see why you need that information to pull the closing cost numbers?

aaln 2y ago
The processing could fail for a bunch of reasons. I'm working on making the upload more fault tolerant including of redacted information.

siscia 2y ago

Congrats on the launch! A bit unrelated question, but what is the fastest way to obtain a similar looks and feel for the UI? Is there a framework?

nxnxhxnxhz 2y ago

[flagged]

trollbridge 2y ago

A side business I have is people who contact me because they just got scammed or need help knowing if something is a scam. One of the things I tell them is to never upload financial documents containing personal information unless: - The company they’re uploading it to is well known like a major bank and the domain in the address bar matches. - They know the company they’re dealing with - which means a business address at a minimum and preferably a phone number. - Avoid anything which claims to save money or be necessary which has a call to action to start uploading personal, documents. This site fails all 3 tests. I was able to find the founder via the name and LinkedIn link. But at least put up a legitimate business name and something like a PO Box. Registering a business name is $35 where this developer is located. A PO Box is around $80 a year. The name “closing.wtf” doesn’t seem to be registered with the state as a legitimate business. These are all red flags to “avoid”. If you’d like a free cybersecurity analysis of your site, I’d be happy to offer a few free expert consulting hours to aain. Reply here and I’ll contact you on LinkedIn.

telgareith 2y ago
A DBA (doing business as) is $35. And not worth the paper its printed on if not filed by an actual entity... which cost $300+. AND you have to give some new nebulous federal entity because "money laundering," or sometimes "OFAC enforcement."
- Arainach 2y ago
  No one should be handing out their address, mortgage information, and other sensitive details to someone who can't spend at least $300 on the bare minimum appearance of legitimacy.
  - aaln 2y ago
    Thank you for the feedback. I'm working on all the points @trollbridge and you @Arainach have mentioned.
aaln 2y ago
Hi @trollbridge, thank you for the valid points. I'm glad to take you up on your consulting offer.

eitally 2y ago

This is essentially the inverse of how big banks are using commercial AI tools for document entity extraction and analysis. For example, https://cloud.google.com/solutions/lending-doc-ai?hl=en https://cloud.google.com/solutions/lending-doc-ai?hl=en I can see why this could be useful, but I also think it might be overkill compared to just an explanatory doc a homebuyer could reference that explains each section of their estimate. It also opens the developer to loads of potential risk in handling personal financial data.

fredgrott 2y ago

hmm, I just read the terms of service.... ahem get a damn lawyer to redo it before you get sued my some State AG.... in this area you cross all t's and dot i's before launch rather than half ass-launch right into a lawsuit.

aorloff 2y ago

What actions can you take by the time you are at closing ? I'm a licensed real estate agent, I actually got my license not just to learn about the business but to be able to save myself on agent commissions if I want to make an offer (if you can pass a CS data structures class you should be able to get a real estate license online in a matter of months), and I still would not try to optimize on closing costs. Do I shop loans ? Absolutely. Are closing costs a scam ? Absolutely. Would I try to optimize closing costs in the context of making a purchase ? No. In the time you have to decide the one really important question (whether to proceed or not) you need to spent it understanding the worst possible parts of the transaction you are about to make, NOT focusing on the closing costs. Some class action lawyers should be worrying about optimizing these fees. Shop your loan, but spend your time investigating the property. Pretending to be a site helping mortgage borrowers not get scammed while actually being a mortgage lead gen portal though : chef's kiss.

apinstein 2y ago
hmm. I don't see why not optimize closing costs. I have done so on 4-5 mortgages myself. When sourcing your lending options, if you are a good borrower at least, you will have multiple options. I always asked for a full closing cost estimate and compared. Usually saved $2000-5000 through a combination of: - effectively shopping around items like title insurance, appraisals, etc by pointing out differences b/c competing vendors - identifying BS items that are not even on all offers, and simply having them removed. people like to add bogus fee lines. For sure doing this as lead-gen is great. Agree that there is a huge risk of uploading personal info -- in the future local AI's will be able to do this. In the short term, they should partner with a known brand to give credibility.
- aorloff 2y ago
  This business is a thinly veiled mortgage lead gen scam Its going on nearly 20 years I have been watching this train wreck

karaterobot 2y ago

If I'm interested in paying an expert to look at the settlement cost estimates and find areas where I might be getting screwed, or could negotiate to save on closing costs, is that a thing? What's the title for a professional human who does what this AI tool says it does? It sounds useful, I'd just rather pay a person for this service.

yboris 2y ago

Related: mortgage VS investments calculator Shows a graph in your terminal: find out if it's better to put in a smaller downpayment and invest the rest. https://github.com/whyboris/mortgage-and-investments https://github.com/whyboris/mortgage-and-investments

yboris 2y ago

Mortgage life hack: pay bi-weekly to pay off mortgage faster while paying less money! https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/bi-weekly-mortgage-calculator/ https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/bi-weekly-mortgage-calcul...

mnahkies 2y ago

There's a number of threads here about privacy/security concerns. I'm curious what should be the bar for grassroots/bootstrapped projects like this? Having recently taken a company through ISO 27001:2022 it's a pretty expensive and time consuming process, that doesn't seem reasonable to do early on in a projects creation - you don't yet know if you have product market fit. However, you're wanting people or companies to trust you with their data - so it starts to feel a little chicken/egg What's the best middle ground here for building trust whilst acquiring your first users?

ISO27Auditor 2y ago
ISO 27001 implementation and certification doesn't have to be overly expensive if you have the right team to help you. It also doesn't have to be time consuming as you can outsource a good deal of the work. I work as ISO 27001 auditor and I help companies get ISO certified. For a small company the combined cost of certification and external provider support ranges from $5k to $8k. Of course if you are a larger organisation the cost will go up, but not drastically.
- mnahkies 2y ago
  That makes sense, but simply isn't viable cost wise IMO if you're trying to bootstrap a side project - until you have your first users and a sense that you have something people are willing to pay for, spending thousands on compliance certifications seems pretty risky. I'm interested in what the best strategy to build/establish trust when you can't yet afford to pay for certification is.

jzone3 2y ago

Hmmmm. On one hand "closing.wtf" definitely stands out... So many startups have boring branding. But on the other hand, you are building in a legacy space. It's important to build trust & pay attention to the feedback here. Does your target demographic understand "startups" or do they just want to solve the problem?

aaln 2y ago
Target demographic are regular people of all types who want to afford a home and have a quality life. All either have the problem now or had in the past and are curious if they got a good deal.

barrosamanda198 2y ago

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tomcam 2y ago

My favorite closing cost for the house I sold in February was $43,000 in excise tax to the city