Mortgage Calculators - What do you want?

L

Left_Blank

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(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.
 
Yeah that Karl calculator is as good as you need really. You could make one with a nice interface but is it worth the effort.
 
Karl Jeacle's is the one I use, but it has too many features.

I suggest a very simple calculator which will deal with the needs of 90% of users.

The main question asked is

What will be my monthly repayments if I borrow €300,000 at 4% over 30 years?

How much will the repayments rise by if the rate rises by 2%.
Suggest that the output should be a table showing the impact of different rate rises and cuts.

What will be the outstanding balance at the end of each year?

Given that I have 10 years left and I owe €300,000, what would be the impact of paying €50,000 off the capital now?

I have not heard of anyone asking about repayments other than monthly except the occasional person who gets paid every 4 weeks.
 
Brendan,

Do you think that people who haven't got a mortgage yet but are thinking about taking one have any interest in anything other than the monthly payment and the total interest paid over the lifetime of the loan?
 
Left_Blank said:
Brendan,

Do you think that people who haven't got a mortgage yet but are thinking about taking one have any interest in anything other than the monthly payment and the total interest paid over the lifetime of the loan?
Click to expand...

Hi Blankie

If there was any way you could use your calculator to get people thinking clearly about how mortgages work, it would be great

People do have interest in "interest paid over the lifetime of the loan" but they shouldn't have as it's a meaningless concept and it could result in a bad decision.
 
Another suggestion, there could be an option where you enter your date of birth and it shows you how much you will owe on your house at age X.
You could even enter the ages of your children.

So you can build up a visible picture of the lifetime of the mortgage, viewed against your own lifetime, rather than just the snapshot of 'how low can I make my repayments today'.
 
repayments other than monthly
Click to expand...
Fortnightly salary payments are much more common than you'd think; its a lot easier if mortgage is also fortnightly.

So, to OP it would be good to have the option to set payment to fortnightly.
 
sadie said:
Another suggestion, there could be an option where you enter your date of birth and it shows you how much you will owe on your house at age X.
You could even enter the ages of your children.

So you can build up a visible picture of the lifetime of the mortgage, viewed against your own lifetime, rather than just the snapshot of 'how low can I make my repayments today'.
Click to expand...

This is excellent, thank you for this.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Hi Blankie

If there was any way you could use your calculator to get people thinking clearly about how mortgages work, it would be great

People do have interest in "interest paid over the lifetime of the loan" but they shouldn't have as it's a meaningless concept and it could result in a bad decision.
Click to expand...

I agree. I think that big numbers and far off interest payments (like you find in any standard amortization schedule) boggle peoples minds and don't really help anyone. I need to find ways to make the numbers become real for people.

Actually, just to try and get a different perspective here. I assume as a moderator on here, you have a solid understanding of mortgages and how they work. You say you use Karls calculator above. What do you use mortgage calculators for? What are you trying to find out?

Any calculator I could design would need to cater to more advanced users as well as it does FTBers so that would be very valuable info also.
 
Thirsty said:
Fortnightly salary payments are much more common than you'd think; its a lot easier if mortgage is also fortnightly.

So, to OP it would be good to have the option to set payment to fortnightly.
Click to expand...

I agree. Even if there aren't people out there paying weekly or fortnightly, I should probably include it anyway try to educate the people paying monthly of the benefits of paying at a higher frequency.
 
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