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Show HN: I built a dashboard to compare mortgage rates across 120 credit unions

393 points by mhashemi 10mo ago

When I bought my home, the big bank I'd been using for years quoted me 7% APR. A local credit union was offering 5.5% for the exact same mortgage. I was surprised until I learned that mortgages are basically standardized products – the government buys almost all of them (see Bits About Money: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/mortgages-are-a-manufactured-product/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/mortgages-are-a-manuf...). So what's the price difference paying for? A recent Bloomberg Odd Lots episode makes the case that it's largely advertising and marketing (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2025-11-28/odd-lots-this-is-why-credit-card-rates-are-so-high-podcast https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2025-11-28/odd-lots-thi...). Credit unions are non-profits without big marketing budgets, so they can pass those savings on, but a lot of people don't know about them. I built this dashboard to make it easier to shop around. I pull public rates from 120+ credit union websites and compares against the weekly FRED national benchmark. Features: - Filter by loan type (30Y/15Y/etc.), eligibility (the hardest part tbh), and rate type - Payment calculator with refi mode (CUs can be a bit slower than big lenders, but that makes them great for refi) - Links to each CU's rates page and eligibility requirements - Toggle to show/hide statistical outliers At the time of writing, the average CU rate is 5.91% vs. 6.23% national average. about $37k difference in total interest on a $500k loan. I actually used seaborn to visualize the rate spread against the four big banks: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1pcj9t7/oc_the_high_cost_of_big_banks_i_tracked_daily/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1pcj9t7/oc... Stack: Python for the data/backend, Svelte/SvelteKit for the frontend. No signup, no ads, no referral fees. Happy to answer questions about the methodology or add CUs people suggest.

aliljet 10mo ago
This is absolutely fantastic. I wish this included commercial loans like DSCRs...
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  Thanks! Re: DSCRs, point me to the data!
msuniverse2026 10mo ago
God I wish we had 30 year fixed mortgages here in Australia. Imagine getting one of those during covid when rates were below 3%. Incredible.
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  Haha, wait until you hear about our fancy 50-year mortgages we'll be getting any day now! But seriously, my favorite discovery when researching CU mortgages is the prevalence of the 15/15 ARM. It's fixed for 15 years, and then adjusts once. Most people refinance within 7 years, or move within 12. So it's like a 30Y fixed, but comes in at 20 basis points cheaper (0.2% lower APR).
  - theendisney 10mo ago
    It could be much longer if there was a sensible formula to predict remaining value. Construction quality plays to small a role in valuations.
- denimnerd42 10mo ago
  just makes the prices higher... you qualify for a house based on ratio of income to payment. so the demand is heavily influenced by the type of financing available.. Other than natural demand, Australia has a high real estate market due to the tax and a superannuation/pension distortions. Should try to fix those first. (probably impossible)
  - cortesoft 10mo ago
    And as I pointed out in a sibling comment, it can lock you into your house if interest rates go up. We can’t afford to sell our house because the extra interest costs would increase our monthly payment by 50% even if the house cost the exact same as our current one.
    - smeej 10mo ago
      I still don't understand how this means you "can't afford to sell your house." It just means you can't afford to buy another house at the same price as the one you have now. That's a different problem, and one that doesn't actually have anything to do with the interest rate on your existing mortgage. You can't afford to buy a house today at the same price that you could on the date you closed on your current house, but that's true regardless of the interest rate on the current house. Let's put a number on it. Since the article uses $400k as a reference point, let's use that. You could afford to buy a $400k house back when you bought your current house. You cannot afford to buy a $400k house today. That would be true whether or not you had purchased your current house, and regardless of the interest rate on its mortgage if you had. You only "can't afford to sell your house" if you're underwater on the mortgage and can't come up with the money to sell it.
ambicapter 10mo ago
"Rates" dropdown doesn't seem to work. I'm using uBlock Origin.
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  Pushing a fix to this now. Assuming we're seeing the same thing: clicking the checkbox doesn't work, but clicking the label should. Should be right as rain shortly. Thanks!
bluGill 10mo ago
My credit union gives me better rates if I'm "active", which means some number of transactions per month. Thus you really need to pick a credit union and start using them a few months before if you want the best rates. (maybe, depending on how that credit union works)
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  Yeah, there's a somewhat wide variance in CUs, in terms of rates, quality of service, etc. I called a few just to spot check and these public rates are supposedly about as good as they can do. From what I gather, even the large CUs (like Transportation FCU) just don't have that sophisticated of an operating model.
xnx 10mo ago
> No signup, no ads, no referral fees. Nice
latortuga 10mo ago
It's always fun to open the front page of HN and see a familiar face. I went to college with this guy! Congrats on shipping Mahmoud!
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  Haha, my uncreative username betrays me once again. Small world! Congrats on founding to you, too!
satellite2 10mo ago
Are those really standardized in the US? Where I live the condition vary widely. And basically the switching costs might easily dominate the total costs if you move/sell. I've found that taking this into account it was better to trade a few places in term of interests for better conditions.
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  Yes, extremely, especially for confirming loans: https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/originating-underwriting/loan-limits https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/originating-underwriting/... Patrick McKenzie (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11) has a great deep dive on this: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/mortgages-are-a-manufactured-product/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/mortgages-are-a-manuf... Closing/switching costs are certainly a consideration still, but the "Truth in Lending Act" (TILA) made it easier to compare the all-in cost by providing a standardized APR number, which is what the dashboard focuses on.
  - metabagel 10mo ago
    * conforming loans
NortySpock 10mo ago
CU suggestion: Kansas City's largest, CommunityAmerica Credit Union https://www.communityamerica.com/about-us https://www.communityamerica.com/about-us
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  The more the merrier, but as far as I can tell, there are no public rates listed on the CommunityAmerica CU site. All behind a "get in touch" interact: https://www.communityamerica.com/personal/borrow/resources/mortgage-rates https://www.communityamerica.com/personal/borrow/resources/m...
duraace2 10mo ago
At first glance, this site seems fantastic! Great job! (As a side note, I've been reading Hacker news for years but have never been active; I created an account just to make this comment)
joshuamcginnis 10mo ago
Very cool. Can you tell us the tech and tools you used to reliably scrape? or get all of the rate data from the various websites?
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  It's more manual than you might think! Sent a message to the email in your profile with more details :)
  - throwaway-0001 10mo ago
    Could you share publicly? Or it’s secret?
t_mann 10mo ago
Great initiative and beautiful site! Tiny nitpick, the wrapping of the controls above the table on my phone could probably be improved. What did you use for the table?
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  Thanks, and thanks for the heads up! Feel free to shoot me a screenshot/more browser details if you don't mind: blog@finfam.app The data table is based on https://svelte-headless-table.bryanmylee.com/ https://svelte-headless-table.bryanmylee.com/
CommenterPerson 10mo ago
Nice Work! I found our credit union posts the mortgage rates clearly on a plain text like page. There's no BS and no games. Whereas with the big banks, you get the games and higher rates .. no matter if they have records of 10 years of your salary deposits. When I tried to suggest credit unions to friends, I got looks. Like, people just assume what everyone else does (get conned by big banks) is good.
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  If you'd like, I'd be happy to add that CU to the roster. Hoping to do more to make the full range of market options more mainstream.
- malnourish 10mo ago
  I too have noticed an inexplicable apprehension about credit unions, even large ones such as Wings. They are almost uniformly better for individuals than big banks, yet people imagine a scenario where they'll need to withdraw cash in the middle of the Mojave so they need WF. Spoiler: 1) you won't and 2) you still can.
  - gverrilla 10mo ago
    Probablty has to do with anti-communist sentiment?
  - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
    > They are almost uniformly better for individuals than big banks The American financial landscape is too diverse to accommodate such sweeping statements. To many depositors default to the big banks. But that doesn’t mean everyone—or even most—who are under optimizing their deposits is better served by a credit union. > people imagine a scenario where they'll need to withdraw cash in the middle of the Mojave so they need WF If ATM access is your bugaboo, an online bank that reimburses everyonea’ ATM fees is the way to go.
  - ssl-3 10mo ago
    I've noticed this apprehension about credit unions, myself, over the years. It's real. But I've also noticed a stream of unrequested adoration towards credit unions, seemingly whenever any topic of personal banking pops up. A random person may simply lament about some fee their bank has charged, or the rate that their mortgage is financed at, or even mention in passing that they use a bank at all. That's normal-enough; people chat about whatever is on their mind all the time. But quite often (too often?) upon the utterance of the word "bank," a whole cadre of people then immediately show up to sing a chorus (in unison) to remind them [and eachother] about how amazingly great credit unions are. Sometimes that cadre snowballs into a circus replete with a marching band, a dancing bear, and a trapeze artist. "Oh, you still have a bank? Why aren't you in a credit union yet?" "Yeah! Credit unions are awesome! People who don't use credit unions are just dumb or something!" "Hey, guess what! My credit union even lets me access my money at 3:00AM the middle of the Mojave! These things are great!" "Oh cool! The dancing bear is here again! I love that bear!" --- The rather uniform predictability of this kind of spectacle can have a very daunting appearance to someone who never asked for it. And thus the apprehension may be explainable easily-enough with one word: Contrarianism. "This group of people is telling me I need to do this thing; therefore, I must not." Or, perhaps with a cautious phrase: "If it sounds like it is too good to be true, then it probably is." We spend a portion of our lives seeking to avoid scams and pitfalls. We aren't always successful at it ("there's a sucker born every minute"), but we still try to seek to avoid being a mark. When see a bunch of guys having a great time playing 3 Card Monte on the corner, we either learn to avoid them or we learn to lose our money. When an unsolicited and eerily-coordinated group of cheering fans crawl out of the woodwork without deliberate provocation and actively seek to impart change, it's justifiable and sane to turn around and run away. Especially when they haul out the dancing bear routine. "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know."
vgeek 10mo ago
Good idea. A few years back I built https://originationdata.com https://originationdata.com that compares mortgage lenders (both FDIC & FCUA members) using HMDA data. I modeled rates by lender, product type as well as by facets like MSA (as well as STL FRED data, too). It grew for a few years and I was ecstatic-- getting backlinks organically from some impressive sites (e.g. larger banks themselves, consumer publications) as well as positive user feedback. Then Google pushed their "Helpful Content Update" and Google search traffic absolutely tanked, so I kind of abandoned it and moved onto other projects that won't be SEO oriented, since Google's view of quality is unbeknownst to me.
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  Oh snap! I was just looking at originationdata.com this week! So awesome. I had originally hoped HMDA data was more than annual, but no luck. It's also a shame that the current admin turned off the data stream here: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/explore-rates/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/explore-rates/ I thought maybe you'd been hit by that update, but even more bummed to hear Google enshittification struck again.
  - vgeek 10mo ago
    The Modified LAR product is what you may want to look at, then. Yes, it is annual, but if you aren't against modeling data, look at the rate spread value, segment then project vs current FRED data and you'll get pretty close to actuals. You can also extract fees and derive APR in addition to having APY data.
- ekjhgkejhgk 10mo ago
  Hey I really like the aesthetics. > Then Google pushed their "Helpful Content Update" and... May I just say, no matter what you work on, a separate piece of work will be getting people to know about it. So fine, people can no longer find you on google. But if your website is truly useful, people will keep talking about it and linking to it, no? Anyway, what are you working on now?
  - 10mo ago
ralph84 10mo ago
Nice work. Navy Federal has always had competitive rates: https://www.navyfederal.org/loans-cards/mortgage/mortgage-rates.html https://www.navyfederal.org/loans-cards/mortgage/mortgage-ra... Membership requires a military connection in the family, but it can go back to grandparents: https://www.navyfederal.org/membership/eligibility.html https://www.navyfederal.org/membership/eligibility.html
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  Love a public rates page. Added to my list for tomorrow.
  - styanax 10mo ago
    This was the first one I looked for as well, NFCU is (per Wikipedia) the largest CU in terms of size and membership in the US - but wasn't included. I think you should add a "how I chose these Credit Unions" on your overview, as missing NFCU immediately made me wonder what others were missed; RBFCU - largest in TX and 10th largest in US - is missing as well. So I'm left to wonder how 2 of the largest CUs in the country were just... missed.
- jp191919 10mo ago
  I was able get membership via a family member that works for DoD, non-military.
- FuriouslyAdrift 10mo ago
  I went the Pentagon Federal route
cubes 10mo ago
Curious, where did you source the data from? Did you just scrape the invidividual bank web sites?
lefstathiou 10mo ago
The Credit Union Mortgage Association can make the crawling easier via this link: https://mortgages.cumortgage.net/start_up.asp https://mortgages.cumortgage.net/start_up.asp
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  That's actually where I started! Majority (but not all) of the institutions present on the dashboard are from the CUMA :) I don't technically crawl that portal, but their robots.txt certainly seems to encourage it. Great resource.
redindian75 10mo ago
Do you do daily scraping to get fresh data? or use services like firecrawler or something?
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  Yeah, it's partially automated. It doesn't use firecrawler or any other services (other than Render for hosting).
blackhaj7 10mo ago
Awesome
throwaway2037 10mo ago
> Estimated monthly payment based on purchasing $400,000 home with 20% down, $567/mo taxes and insurance, and 1.65% closing costs. Does anyone know the source of these numbers? Example: The are national median values. Except maybe Texas, where else can you buy a house/apt in the US near a major job center for only 400k?
- Will_Do 10mo ago
  National median home price is $410k[1]. Texas is less than $300k[2]. Only thing that's unrealistic is most people who buy a house for $400k will probably get an FHA loan and put 3% down so will have a higher payment because of (1) mortgage insurance and (2) borrowing more money. [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS [2]: https://www.zillow.com/home-values/6915/san-antonio-tx/ https://www.zillow.com/home-values/6915/san-antonio-tx/
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  Those are just some medians I either Googled or LLM'd to act as defaults. You can click that sentence and change all those values to estimate.
- smt88 10mo ago
  Atlanta, Charlotte, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Chicago, probably many others Are you in CA, NY, or MA? I wonder if your scale is skewed.
- xboxnolifes 10mo ago
  How close do you consider near? <400k is within 30 minutes of a major Hub in a lot of the US.
- FuriouslyAdrift 10mo ago
  Indianapolis... but it's drying up fast (avg price is almost $400k, now, but there are still decent choices in older neighborhoods) North side of Indy (Carmel, Fishers, Geist) is listed as one of the best places to live in the US.
- potato3732842 10mo ago
calmworm 10mo ago
Cool concept, but it doesn’t account for assumptions the sites make when displaying rates. Not something to you can really account for across the board though is it? Like “assuming a $300k loan on a home valued at $600k” to get a low 5’s rate… for example.
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  Definitely. Unlikely that anyone starting here will get exactly the estimated monthly payment, especially as it takes time to lock in a rate and rates can change daily. What it does do is only use APRs to give as much of an apples-to-apples comparison as can be had. Click any entry in the table to go through to the CU's site, which usually has some means of getting a more accurate rate and/or quote.
  - calmworm 10mo ago
    Right. It’s not a problem with the tool per se, just sort of a grey-area as far as transparency of rates for the lenders.
nunez 10mo ago
I didn't do a CU for my mortgage (mostly because my lender is awesome and I'm happy with our rate), but I did for my recent auto loan and moved my accounts to them. NIGHT AND DAY DIFFERENCE. customer service is fantastic and their online banking app/website is no bullshit. It even supports TOTP 2FA, which I definitely wasn't expecting given that the huge bank I came from didn't for some reason. Can't recommend a credit union enough.
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  Real talk, it's so hard to find TOTP 2FA in banking.
chrisgd 10mo ago
Nice job!
jameson 10mo ago
Love it! Where do you get the data?
ryandrake 10mo ago
Great work. I used to use Bankrate for this, but its UX has gone to shit over the past few years, so it's nice to have an alternative!
Epa095 10mo ago
Good work! Does anyone else think that the government should do something like this? Either enforce that vendors sends their offers to a central database which is publicly accessible, or at least make it available so the vendors can choose to send data there (maybe enforce it for big vendors, to get it started). In general I think it makes sense for the government to be responsible for the market place, and the infrastructure around the market. The data should be avaliable publicly through a API so one could build different frontends and analysis services on it. Example markets are electricity, deposits, mortgages, housing.
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  This kind existed for a while in the USA. Current admin turned off the data stream: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/explore-rates/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/explore-rates/
ta12653421 10mo ago
good one, mission accomplished! ++1 Ideas for monetization: Setup an automatic email alert if prices are changing for a given area and charge 5 USD per year per user. Also you could extend this project and sell it later to one of the financial mags / publishers / websites.
- immy 10mo ago
  I'd be into that, maybe. I guess if I could find an APR 0.5% better than what I've got, I'd refi. I wouldn't have subscribed last year, but now that rates are dropping, it's worth tuning in. But there is a voice of doubt: I'll probably hear about lower mortgage rates in a news headline or my original broker might even reach out.
  - ta12653421 10mo ago
    Id say: There are definetly some persons out there who are willing to pay, and since its once a year usually they forget about their subscription :-D I do not know about the US market: In the EU, mortgage markets are highly fragmented and its possible to live in one area and get a loan from a bank in another area
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
robowo 10mo ago
This is awesome! I wish there was sth similar for Europe! In Germany you have to go to a morgage broker and trust that his self-interest is aligned with yours :D
- bux93 10mo ago
  Right there on https://hypofriend.de/en/mortgage-rates-germany https://hypofriend.de/en/mortgage-rates-germany first link on Google.
  - rkachowski 10mo ago
    They are exactly the kind of mortgage broker mentioned in the parent comment.
  - robowo 10mo ago
    Thanks for the link but thats not really the same. They are just giving you indications and then you have to sign up. I would like to see more concrete numbers per bank. Maybe there are not many factors that influence the rate?
    - bux93 10mo ago
      The dashboard in this hackernews story also provides indications. In both cases what you see is the "normal" rate. If you go to any of these credit unions and your credit score is too low for example, you will get a different rate.
- dominicrose 10mo ago
  The current rate in France is more or less 3.2% for 25 years. It's better than the rates we see on this page but as someone who bought at a rate of 1% (1.75% real rate, something like that) I strongly advise people not to have a 33% debt ratio. This is the max allowed by banks but it's a huge risk compared to renting which is basically risk-free. Buying something less expensive to have a smaller debt ratio may be better than renting. ps: comparing rates alone isn't fair because Europe has a lot more taxes
- 10mo ago
qazswx 10mo ago
ccc
Loughla 10mo ago
Everyone should switch to a local credit union. The rates are better, they're entirely local, and they're usually not trying to actively screw you.
- morelandjs 10mo ago
  The customer service is better. Rates are generally way better. The downside is generally their phone apps and their fraud departments. I had a lovely credit union but their CC was basically unusable because they hired some crummy and over aggressive fraud detection third party that would lock down my card any time there was a strong breeze.
thedudeabides5 10mo ago
nice, more people should do stuff like this
JensRantil 10mo ago
I find it somewhat interesting that a US 30 year fixed mortgage is 5,49%, while a 10 year fixed mortgage in Sweden currently is at 3,6%[1]. Big difference! [1] https://www.compricer.se/borantor/ https://www.compricer.se/borantor/
- amenghra 10mo ago
  If you are comparing across currencies you have to take each currencies expected inflation rate into account.
- potato3732842 10mo ago
  A lot of that is from the term. Rate goes up with term. A 10yr or a 15yr in the US would have a lower rate
BowBun 10mo ago
Having worked in mortgage, two important points: 1. Credit unions and large banks do not have access to the same vault of loan products at the same rates as each other. Fannie and Freddie offer rate discounts at volume. 2. Credit unions typically do not run mortgage programs for profit, unlike big banks. This also contributes to their ability to eat your cost. Tit-for-tat, if you reduce it all down, the Chase's and Wells' should be able to offer the better terms based on their agreements with GSEs/secondary markets. In reality, no one is getting the product at face value, so opportunities like this will exist, and you can take advantage of it like in these cases.
- potato3732842 10mo ago
  There's also specialization and process optimization that big banks do that little CUs simply don't have the volume to justify. If someone buried deep within BofA or Chase or some other national entity looks at your stuff and says some factor that's marginal makes it a no-go for some product that's the end of it despite being offset by some other factor that's out of the ordinary in a good direction. At a credit union with the process broken down across fewer people the person making that decision is more likely to be able to see that the big picture math still works for a given product.
  - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
    > At a credit union with the process broken down across fewer people the person making that decision is more likely to be able to see that the big picture math still works for a given product You and OP agree. Broadly speaking, if you have good credit (or are wealthy) you’ll get a better rate at a bank or mortgage specialist. If you don’t, you’re more likely to get approved at a credit union.
    - potato3732842 10mo ago
      > If you don’t, you’re more likely to get approved at a credit union. Or you're buying well below your means but don't wanna get screwed into a different product because what you're buying is on the ragged edge of what can be bought with the lower cost mortgage product you want. Some jerk at corporate for the big bank will punt because some rule he's supposed to follow says he ought to do that and it's not like he stands to benefit by not. The CU will probably squint and work with you.
eagrt4tdg 10mo ago
Very nice! I would be great if there was also a way to see rates for investment properties.
- mhashemi 10mo ago
  I'd say the exact rate as displayed might not matter as such. It's more a discovery tool for folks to find a competitive CU that they're eligible for. If the CU looks good for one type of rate, it's probably worth exploring for others.

393 points by mhashemi 10mo ago

aliljet 10mo ago

This is absolutely fantastic. I wish this included commercial loans like DSCRs...

mhashemi 10mo ago
Thanks! Re: DSCRs, point me to the data!

msuniverse2026 10mo ago

God I wish we had 30 year fixed mortgages here in Australia. Imagine getting one of those during covid when rates were below 3%. Incredible.

mhashemi 10mo ago
Haha, wait until you hear about our fancy 50-year mortgages we'll be getting any day now! But seriously, my favorite discovery when researching CU mortgages is the prevalence of the 15/15 ARM. It's fixed for 15 years, and then adjusts once. Most people refinance within 7 years, or move within 12. So it's like a 30Y fixed, but comes in at 20 basis points cheaper (0.2% lower APR).
- theendisney 10mo ago
  It could be much longer if there was a sensible formula to predict remaining value. Construction quality plays to small a role in valuations.
denimnerd42 10mo ago
just makes the prices higher... you qualify for a house based on ratio of income to payment. so the demand is heavily influenced by the type of financing available.. Other than natural demand, Australia has a high real estate market due to the tax and a superannuation/pension distortions. Should try to fix those first. (probably impossible)
- cortesoft 10mo ago
  And as I pointed out in a sibling comment, it can lock you into your house if interest rates go up. We can’t afford to sell our house because the extra interest costs would increase our monthly payment by 50% even if the house cost the exact same as our current one.
  - smeej 10mo ago
    I still don't understand how this means you "can't afford to sell your house." It just means you can't afford to buy another house at the same price as the one you have now. That's a different problem, and one that doesn't actually have anything to do with the interest rate on your existing mortgage. You can't afford to buy a house today at the same price that you could on the date you closed on your current house, but that's true regardless of the interest rate on the current house. Let's put a number on it. Since the article uses $400k as a reference point, let's use that. You could afford to buy a $400k house back when you bought your current house. You cannot afford to buy a $400k house today. That would be true whether or not you had purchased your current house, and regardless of the interest rate on its mortgage if you had. You only "can't afford to sell your house" if you're underwater on the mortgage and can't come up with the money to sell it.

ambicapter 10mo ago

"Rates" dropdown doesn't seem to work. I'm using uBlock Origin.

mhashemi 10mo ago
Pushing a fix to this now. Assuming we're seeing the same thing: clicking the checkbox doesn't work, but clicking the label should. Should be right as rain shortly. Thanks!

bluGill 10mo ago

My credit union gives me better rates if I'm "active", which means some number of transactions per month. Thus you really need to pick a credit union and start using them a few months before if you want the best rates. (maybe, depending on how that credit union works)

mhashemi 10mo ago
Yeah, there's a somewhat wide variance in CUs, in terms of rates, quality of service, etc. I called a few just to spot check and these public rates are supposedly about as good as they can do. From what I gather, even the large CUs (like Transportation FCU) just don't have that sophisticated of an operating model.

xnx 10mo ago

> No signup, no ads, no referral fees. Nice

latortuga 10mo ago

It's always fun to open the front page of HN and see a familiar face. I went to college with this guy! Congrats on shipping Mahmoud!

mhashemi 10mo ago
Haha, my uncreative username betrays me once again. Small world! Congrats on founding to you, too!

satellite2 10mo ago

Are those really standardized in the US? Where I live the condition vary widely. And basically the switching costs might easily dominate the total costs if you move/sell. I've found that taking this into account it was better to trade a few places in term of interests for better conditions.

mhashemi 10mo ago
Yes, extremely, especially for confirming loans: https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/originating-underwriting/loan-limits https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/originating-underwriting/... Patrick McKenzie (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11) has a great deep dive on this: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/mortgages-are-a-manufactured-product/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/mortgages-are-a-manuf... Closing/switching costs are certainly a consideration still, but the "Truth in Lending Act" (TILA) made it easier to compare the all-in cost by providing a standardized APR number, which is what the dashboard focuses on.
- metabagel 10mo ago
  * conforming loans

NortySpock 10mo ago

CU suggestion: Kansas City's largest, CommunityAmerica Credit Union https://www.communityamerica.com/about-us https://www.communityamerica.com/about-us

mhashemi 10mo ago
The more the merrier, but as far as I can tell, there are no public rates listed on the CommunityAmerica CU site. All behind a "get in touch" interact: https://www.communityamerica.com/personal/borrow/resources/mortgage-rates https://www.communityamerica.com/personal/borrow/resources/m...

duraace2 10mo ago

At first glance, this site seems fantastic! Great job! (As a side note, I've been reading Hacker news for years but have never been active; I created an account just to make this comment)

joshuamcginnis 10mo ago

Very cool. Can you tell us the tech and tools you used to reliably scrape? or get all of the rate data from the various websites?

mhashemi 10mo ago
It's more manual than you might think! Sent a message to the email in your profile with more details :)
- throwaway-0001 10mo ago
  Could you share publicly? Or it’s secret?

t_mann 10mo ago

Great initiative and beautiful site! Tiny nitpick, the wrapping of the controls above the table on my phone could probably be improved. What did you use for the table?

mhashemi 10mo ago
Thanks, and thanks for the heads up! Feel free to shoot me a screenshot/more browser details if you don't mind: blog@finfam.app The data table is based on https://svelte-headless-table.bryanmylee.com/ https://svelte-headless-table.bryanmylee.com/

CommenterPerson 10mo ago

Nice Work! I found our credit union posts the mortgage rates clearly on a plain text like page. There's no BS and no games. Whereas with the big banks, you get the games and higher rates .. no matter if they have records of 10 years of your salary deposits. When I tried to suggest credit unions to friends, I got looks. Like, people just assume what everyone else does (get conned by big banks) is good.

mhashemi 10mo ago
If you'd like, I'd be happy to add that CU to the roster. Hoping to do more to make the full range of market options more mainstream.
malnourish 10mo ago
I too have noticed an inexplicable apprehension about credit unions, even large ones such as Wings. They are almost uniformly better for individuals than big banks, yet people imagine a scenario where they'll need to withdraw cash in the middle of the Mojave so they need WF. Spoiler: 1) you won't and 2) you still can.
- gverrilla 10mo ago
  Probablty has to do with anti-communist sentiment?
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
  > They are almost uniformly better for individuals than big banks The American financial landscape is too diverse to accommodate such sweeping statements. To many depositors default to the big banks. But that doesn’t mean everyone—or even most—who are under optimizing their deposits is better served by a credit union. > people imagine a scenario where they'll need to withdraw cash in the middle of the Mojave so they need WF If ATM access is your bugaboo, an online bank that reimburses everyonea’ ATM fees is the way to go.
- ssl-3 10mo ago
  I've noticed this apprehension about credit unions, myself, over the years. It's real. But I've also noticed a stream of unrequested adoration towards credit unions, seemingly whenever any topic of personal banking pops up. A random person may simply lament about some fee their bank has charged, or the rate that their mortgage is financed at, or even mention in passing that they use a bank at all. That's normal-enough; people chat about whatever is on their mind all the time. But quite often (too often?) upon the utterance of the word "bank," a whole cadre of people then immediately show up to sing a chorus (in unison) to remind them [and eachother] about how amazingly great credit unions are. Sometimes that cadre snowballs into a circus replete with a marching band, a dancing bear, and a trapeze artist. "Oh, you still have a bank? Why aren't you in a credit union yet?" "Yeah! Credit unions are awesome! People who don't use credit unions are just dumb or something!" "Hey, guess what! My credit union even lets me access my money at 3:00AM the middle of the Mojave! These things are great!" "Oh cool! The dancing bear is here again! I love that bear!" --- The rather uniform predictability of this kind of spectacle can have a very daunting appearance to someone who never asked for it. And thus the apprehension may be explainable easily-enough with one word: Contrarianism. "This group of people is telling me I need to do this thing; therefore, I must not." Or, perhaps with a cautious phrase: "If it sounds like it is too good to be true, then it probably is." We spend a portion of our lives seeking to avoid scams and pitfalls. We aren't always successful at it ("there's a sucker born every minute"), but we still try to seek to avoid being a mark. When see a bunch of guys having a great time playing 3 Card Monte on the corner, we either learn to avoid them or we learn to lose our money. When an unsolicited and eerily-coordinated group of cheering fans crawl out of the woodwork without deliberate provocation and actively seek to impart change, it's justifiable and sane to turn around and run away. Especially when they haul out the dancing bear routine. "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know."

vgeek 10mo ago

Good idea. A few years back I built https://originationdata.com https://originationdata.com that compares mortgage lenders (both FDIC & FCUA members) using HMDA data. I modeled rates by lender, product type as well as by facets like MSA (as well as STL FRED data, too). It grew for a few years and I was ecstatic-- getting backlinks organically from some impressive sites (e.g. larger banks themselves, consumer publications) as well as positive user feedback. Then Google pushed their "Helpful Content Update" and Google search traffic absolutely tanked, so I kind of abandoned it and moved onto other projects that won't be SEO oriented, since Google's view of quality is unbeknownst to me.

mhashemi 10mo ago
Oh snap! I was just looking at originationdata.com this week! So awesome. I had originally hoped HMDA data was more than annual, but no luck. It's also a shame that the current admin turned off the data stream here: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/explore-rates/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/explore-rates/ I thought maybe you'd been hit by that update, but even more bummed to hear Google enshittification struck again.
- vgeek 10mo ago
  The Modified LAR product is what you may want to look at, then. Yes, it is annual, but if you aren't against modeling data, look at the rate spread value, segment then project vs current FRED data and you'll get pretty close to actuals. You can also extract fees and derive APR in addition to having APY data.
ekjhgkejhgk 10mo ago
Hey I really like the aesthetics. > Then Google pushed their "Helpful Content Update" and... May I just say, no matter what you work on, a separate piece of work will be getting people to know about it. So fine, people can no longer find you on google. But if your website is truly useful, people will keep talking about it and linking to it, no? Anyway, what are you working on now?
- 10mo ago

ralph84 10mo ago

Nice work. Navy Federal has always had competitive rates: https://www.navyfederal.org/loans-cards/mortgage/mortgage-rates.html https://www.navyfederal.org/loans-cards/mortgage/mortgage-ra... Membership requires a military connection in the family, but it can go back to grandparents: https://www.navyfederal.org/membership/eligibility.html https://www.navyfederal.org/membership/eligibility.html

mhashemi 10mo ago
Love a public rates page. Added to my list for tomorrow.
- styanax 10mo ago
  This was the first one I looked for as well, NFCU is (per Wikipedia) the largest CU in terms of size and membership in the US - but wasn't included. I think you should add a "how I chose these Credit Unions" on your overview, as missing NFCU immediately made me wonder what others were missed; RBFCU - largest in TX and 10th largest in US - is missing as well. So I'm left to wonder how 2 of the largest CUs in the country were just... missed.
jp191919 10mo ago
I was able get membership via a family member that works for DoD, non-military.
FuriouslyAdrift 10mo ago
I went the Pentagon Federal route

cubes 10mo ago

Curious, where did you source the data from? Did you just scrape the invidividual bank web sites?

lefstathiou 10mo ago

The Credit Union Mortgage Association can make the crawling easier via this link: https://mortgages.cumortgage.net/start_up.asp https://mortgages.cumortgage.net/start_up.asp

mhashemi 10mo ago
That's actually where I started! Majority (but not all) of the institutions present on the dashboard are from the CUMA :) I don't technically crawl that portal, but their robots.txt certainly seems to encourage it. Great resource.

redindian75 10mo ago

Do you do daily scraping to get fresh data? or use services like firecrawler or something?

mhashemi 10mo ago
Yeah, it's partially automated. It doesn't use firecrawler or any other services (other than Render for hosting).

blackhaj7 10mo ago

Awesome

throwaway2037 10mo ago

> Estimated monthly payment based on purchasing $400,000 home with 20% down, $567/mo taxes and insurance, and 1.65% closing costs. Does anyone know the source of these numbers? Example: The are national median values. Except maybe Texas, where else can you buy a house/apt in the US near a major job center for only 400k?

Will_Do 10mo ago
National median home price is $410k[1]. Texas is less than $300k[2]. Only thing that's unrealistic is most people who buy a house for $400k will probably get an FHA loan and put 3% down so will have a higher payment because of (1) mortgage insurance and (2) borrowing more money. [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS [2]: https://www.zillow.com/home-values/6915/san-antonio-tx/ https://www.zillow.com/home-values/6915/san-antonio-tx/
mhashemi 10mo ago
Those are just some medians I either Googled or LLM'd to act as defaults. You can click that sentence and change all those values to estimate.
smt88 10mo ago
Atlanta, Charlotte, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Chicago, probably many others Are you in CA, NY, or MA? I wonder if your scale is skewed.
xboxnolifes 10mo ago
How close do you consider near? <400k is within 30 minutes of a major Hub in a lot of the US.
FuriouslyAdrift 10mo ago
Indianapolis... but it's drying up fast (avg price is almost $400k, now, but there are still decent choices in older neighborhoods) North side of Indy (Carmel, Fishers, Geist) is listed as one of the best places to live in the US.
potato3732842 10mo ago

calmworm 10mo ago

Cool concept, but it doesn’t account for assumptions the sites make when displaying rates. Not something to you can really account for across the board though is it? Like “assuming a $300k loan on a home valued at $600k” to get a low 5’s rate… for example.

mhashemi 10mo ago
Definitely. Unlikely that anyone starting here will get exactly the estimated monthly payment, especially as it takes time to lock in a rate and rates can change daily. What it does do is only use APRs to give as much of an apples-to-apples comparison as can be had. Click any entry in the table to go through to the CU's site, which usually has some means of getting a more accurate rate and/or quote.
- calmworm 10mo ago
  Right. It’s not a problem with the tool per se, just sort of a grey-area as far as transparency of rates for the lenders.

nunez 10mo ago

I didn't do a CU for my mortgage (mostly because my lender is awesome and I'm happy with our rate), but I did for my recent auto loan and moved my accounts to them. NIGHT AND DAY DIFFERENCE. customer service is fantastic and their online banking app/website is no bullshit. It even supports TOTP 2FA, which I definitely wasn't expecting given that the huge bank I came from didn't for some reason. Can't recommend a credit union enough.

mhashemi 10mo ago
Real talk, it's so hard to find TOTP 2FA in banking.

chrisgd 10mo ago

Nice job!

jameson 10mo ago

Love it! Where do you get the data?

ryandrake 10mo ago

Great work. I used to use Bankrate for this, but its UX has gone to shit over the past few years, so it's nice to have an alternative!

Epa095 10mo ago

Good work! Does anyone else think that the government should do something like this? Either enforce that vendors sends their offers to a central database which is publicly accessible, or at least make it available so the vendors can choose to send data there (maybe enforce it for big vendors, to get it started). In general I think it makes sense for the government to be responsible for the market place, and the infrastructure around the market. The data should be avaliable publicly through a API so one could build different frontends and analysis services on it. Example markets are electricity, deposits, mortgages, housing.

mhashemi 10mo ago
This kind existed for a while in the USA. Current admin turned off the data stream: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/explore-rates/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/explore-rates/

ta12653421 10mo ago

good one, mission accomplished! ++1 Ideas for monetization: Setup an automatic email alert if prices are changing for a given area and charge 5 USD per year per user. Also you could extend this project and sell it later to one of the financial mags / publishers / websites.

immy 10mo ago
I'd be into that, maybe. I guess if I could find an APR 0.5% better than what I've got, I'd refi. I wouldn't have subscribed last year, but now that rates are dropping, it's worth tuning in. But there is a voice of doubt: I'll probably hear about lower mortgage rates in a news headline or my original broker might even reach out.
- ta12653421 10mo ago
  Id say: There are definetly some persons out there who are willing to pay, and since its once a year usually they forget about their subscription :-D I do not know about the US market: In the EU, mortgage markets are highly fragmented and its possible to live in one area and get a loan from a bank in another area
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]

robowo 10mo ago

This is awesome! I wish there was sth similar for Europe! In Germany you have to go to a morgage broker and trust that his self-interest is aligned with yours :D

bux93 10mo ago
Right there on https://hypofriend.de/en/mortgage-rates-germany https://hypofriend.de/en/mortgage-rates-germany first link on Google.
- rkachowski 10mo ago
  They are exactly the kind of mortgage broker mentioned in the parent comment.
- robowo 10mo ago
  Thanks for the link but thats not really the same. They are just giving you indications and then you have to sign up. I would like to see more concrete numbers per bank. Maybe there are not many factors that influence the rate?
  - bux93 10mo ago
    The dashboard in this hackernews story also provides indications. In both cases what you see is the "normal" rate. If you go to any of these credit unions and your credit score is too low for example, you will get a different rate.
dominicrose 10mo ago
The current rate in France is more or less 3.2% for 25 years. It's better than the rates we see on this page but as someone who bought at a rate of 1% (1.75% real rate, something like that) I strongly advise people not to have a 33% debt ratio. This is the max allowed by banks but it's a huge risk compared to renting which is basically risk-free. Buying something less expensive to have a smaller debt ratio may be better than renting. ps: comparing rates alone isn't fair because Europe has a lot more taxes
10mo ago

qazswx 10mo ago

ccc

Loughla 10mo ago

Everyone should switch to a local credit union. The rates are better, they're entirely local, and they're usually not trying to actively screw you.

morelandjs 10mo ago
The customer service is better. Rates are generally way better. The downside is generally their phone apps and their fraud departments. I had a lovely credit union but their CC was basically unusable because they hired some crummy and over aggressive fraud detection third party that would lock down my card any time there was a strong breeze.

thedudeabides5 10mo ago

nice, more people should do stuff like this

JensRantil 10mo ago

I find it somewhat interesting that a US 30 year fixed mortgage is 5,49%, while a 10 year fixed mortgage in Sweden currently is at 3,6%[1]. Big difference! [1] https://www.compricer.se/borantor/ https://www.compricer.se/borantor/

amenghra 10mo ago
If you are comparing across currencies you have to take each currencies expected inflation rate into account.
potato3732842 10mo ago
A lot of that is from the term. Rate goes up with term. A 10yr or a 15yr in the US would have a lower rate

BowBun 10mo ago

Having worked in mortgage, two important points: 1. Credit unions and large banks do not have access to the same vault of loan products at the same rates as each other. Fannie and Freddie offer rate discounts at volume. 2. Credit unions typically do not run mortgage programs for profit, unlike big banks. This also contributes to their ability to eat your cost. Tit-for-tat, if you reduce it all down, the Chase's and Wells' should be able to offer the better terms based on their agreements with GSEs/secondary markets. In reality, no one is getting the product at face value, so opportunities like this will exist, and you can take advantage of it like in these cases.

potato3732842 10mo ago
There's also specialization and process optimization that big banks do that little CUs simply don't have the volume to justify. If someone buried deep within BofA or Chase or some other national entity looks at your stuff and says some factor that's marginal makes it a no-go for some product that's the end of it despite being offset by some other factor that's out of the ordinary in a good direction. At a credit union with the process broken down across fewer people the person making that decision is more likely to be able to see that the big picture math still works for a given product.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
  > At a credit union with the process broken down across fewer people the person making that decision is more likely to be able to see that the big picture math still works for a given product You and OP agree. Broadly speaking, if you have good credit (or are wealthy) you’ll get a better rate at a bank or mortgage specialist. If you don’t, you’re more likely to get approved at a credit union.
  - potato3732842 10mo ago
    > If you don’t, you’re more likely to get approved at a credit union. Or you're buying well below your means but don't wanna get screwed into a different product because what you're buying is on the ragged edge of what can be bought with the lower cost mortgage product you want. Some jerk at corporate for the big bank will punt because some rule he's supposed to follow says he ought to do that and it's not like he stands to benefit by not. The CU will probably squint and work with you.

eagrt4tdg 10mo ago

Very nice! I would be great if there was also a way to see rates for investment properties.

mhashemi 10mo ago
I'd say the exact rate as displayed might not matter as such. It's more a discovery tool for folks to find a competitive CU that they're eligible for. If the CU looks good for one type of rate, it's probably worth exploring for others.