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The NY Times Buy or Rent calculator is a great tool (and probably one of the most commonly used). However, it has certain flaws: for starters, it assumes you k
by philipcamilleri 14y ago
The NY Times Buy or Rent calculator is a great tool (and probably one of the most commonly used).
However, it has certain flaws: for starters, it assumes you know exactly what tax you pay, what mortgage interest rates (and fees) you qualify for, what your property taxes will be, etc, etc.
One of the key features about SmartAsset.com is that we do all that for you, and then let you tweak the numbers if/as you wish.
We also pull in live mortgage data (along with a number of other datasets) to compare various buy-v-rent scenarios that actually apply to you.
This is also only the beginning of the product. Apart from comparing buy/rent, we want to ensure users understand how much they can really afford (and why), how taxes will change over time, how their credit-score affects their ability to borrow money, etc.
Beyond that, there's also managing the process that goes with any major financial decision (what we like to call the "interest, learn, shop, buy" steps.
- icefox 14y agoIt would be interesting if you could hook up with a site like redfin or whatnot to embed that on their site so when you are looking at a house it automatically fills in all the data it knows about.
- philipcamilleri 14y ago@icefox: that is exactly on our roadmap. We want to (a) be able to show users what they can afford in their selected (and neighboring) regions; and (b) to get all the right information for specific properties. We're coding this right now, and should have it released this summer.
- sadga 14y agoRedfin already has property taxes and mortgage rates, it just doesn't bother to put taxes in the calculator, for unknown reasons. Doesn't have the credit score stuff, but that's not really relevant -- if you have poor credit, buying a house anywhere near your affordability boundary is likely a huge mistake anyway.