Mortgage Calculators - What do you want?

duckyfuzz

(mods: rest assured there will be no links, no brand names or trademarks mentioned by me in this thread).

I've spent a lot of time browsing around the calculators currently on offer out there and I believe that most of them are missing useful features and are generally badly designed. I think they only allow people a very limited range of features compared to what is possible. For example, there aren't many out there capable of dealing with any payment frequency other than monthly.

I'm a web software designer and I think I could do a lot better but I'm worried that perhaps the reason for the limited power of available calculators is that nobody is interested in more complicated features. People only want to see the monthly payment estimate and that's it.

So, I'd like to try to get a sense of how people use these calculators and what they use them for.

Perhaps people might suggest:

• What they use mortgage calculators for or why,
• What do you use mortgage calculators,
• Features they would like to see on Mortgage Calculators but don't,
• The type of people they feel mortgage calculators are useful for (people nearing retirement, people struggling with payments etc.)

All other information/suggestions are welcome obviously. Even if you think that the current crop of calculators are perfectly capable and I'm wasting my time I'd love to hear it.

Maybe with some help I could make a mortgage calculator that is more powerful and more useful for more people.

Richard_Webster

For example, there aren't many out there capable of dealing with any payment frequency other than monthly.

Does anyone have a mortgage where the payment frequency is other than monthly?

sonastin

At the moment, calculators only seem to go in one direction - you need to know how much you want to borrow and how much the property is and then it will tell you what you will be repaying. I'd like a calculator that worked things out in the opposite direction -this is how much I could afford each month and these are the mortgage products on offer so how much would I be able to borrow and what would my minimum deposit need to be for that mortgage, i.e. what sort of price of house could I afford to repay on and does my deposit match my repayment capability...

duckyfuzz

Richard_Webster wrote: »

Does anyone have a mortgage where the payment frequency is other than monthly?

I know that (at least in Ireland where I live) some banks do offer fortnightly or weekly payment frequencies. I also know that certain repayment frequencies can lead to the borrower paying back less interest over the life of the loan so I would assume that at least some people are availing of this option.

However, I have no concrete information as to what percentage of people have a payment frequency other than monthly but I would guess that it is small.

duckyfuzz

sonastin wrote: »

At the moment, calculators only seem to go in one direction - you need to know how much you want to borrow and how much the property is and then it will tell you what you will be repaying. I'd like a calculator that worked things out in the opposite direction -this is how much I could afford each month and these are the mortgage products on offer so how much would I be able to borrow and what would my minimum deposit need to be for that mortgage, i.e. what sort of price of house could I afford to repay on and does my deposit match my repayment capability...

Yes this is something that I've considered and while I haven't gotten into the technicalities of it too deeply, it shouldn't be too difficult to achieve.

Do you think this type of tool would be most useful for people looking for a new mortgage or does it have an application for people who already have a mortgage also?

DVardysShadow

There are actually 2 scenarios in which a mortgage calculator is required . In both cases, the user is asking 'what if', but there are some big differences

• User has a mortgage already and wants to establish what if for changes of interest rate - and changes of product
• User does not have a mortgage but wishes to know how much could be borrowed for a monthly sum

Financial prudence suggests that the user who does not have a mortgage already should not only be told the headline loan amount, but should also get some financial stress tests of the monthly amount for some higher rate of interest - ie the second use case leads to 1 or more instances of the first use case.

Hammyman

sonastin wrote: »

At the moment, calculators only seem to go in one direction - you need to know how much you want to borrow and how much the property is and then it will tell you what you will be repaying. I'd like a calculator that worked things out in the opposite direction -this is how much I could afford each month and these are the mortgage products on offer so how much would I be able to borrow and what would my minimum deposit need to be for that mortgage, i.e. what sort of price of house could I afford to repay on and does my deposit match my repayment capability...

Not that simple. Mortgage products and availability can change on a daily basis. The mortgage advisor who dealt with me is part of a business club I'm in. He downloads the information EVERY MORNING. The thing is as well is that unless a mortgage company authorises you as a broker, you'll not get the information so unless every single mortgage company has you as a broker, you're not going to get a full market view.

tyllwyd

I'd like a calculator which can also give a clear simple mortgage amortization schedule - I've found a few on the internet but most are in dollars (which is not a huge problem but annoying!). The best one I found was on a website that seems to have disappeared now.

duckyfuzz

Hammyman wrote: »

Not that simple. Mortgage products and availability can change on a daily basis. The mortgage advisor who dealt with me is part of a business club I'm in. He downloads the information EVERY MORNING. The thing is as well is that unless a mortgage company authorises you as a broker, you'll not get the information so unless every single mortgage company has you as a broker, you're not going to get a full market view.

This is very interesting.

I've actually been searching around a little for some sort of online database of all available mortgage products that I would be able to connect to to download their details. I haven't put much time into this angle yet but there certainly didn't seem to be an obvious solution that I could find.

The fact that this suggests that mortgage providers already have procedures in place to deal with these types of requests is actually slightly encouraging, even if the information feeds are difficult to get access to.

I might just try and contact a few mortgage providers about this and see where it leads.

duckyfuzz

tyllwyd wrote: »

I'd like a calculator which can also give a clear simple mortgage amortization schedule - I've found a few on the internet but most are in dollars (which is not a huge problem but annoying!). The best one I found was on a website that seems to have disappeared now.

Thanks for your reply.

If you wouldn't mind taking a little more time out of your day, I'd be very interested to hear what it was you were trying to find out with an amortization schedule or what you we're using it for? When you say 'the best one', do you think you could flesh that out just a little? What was it about it that made it the best? Clarity of information, easy of use, detail, advanced features? I'd really appreciate just a few words on that.

duckyfuzz

I guess what I'm most interested in right now is finding out:

Do you think that most people who use mortgage calculators would be interested in having them hooked up to real mortgage products or are they happy enough just dealing in hypothetical numbers/rates etc?