[HN Gopher] Show HN: Free mortgage analysis tool to avoid gettin...
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Show HN: Free mortgage analysis tool to avoid getting screwed by
closing costs
Author : aaln
Score : 139 points
Date : 2024-11-15 17:38 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (closingwtf.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (closingwtf.com)
| kojeovo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| Ignore the haters, they will probably never be your customer.
| effingwewt wrote:
| 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.
| ziddoap wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| fragmede wrote:
| 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.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Absolutely agree.
|
| Neither are "haters", though. And, speaking on quality of
| feedback, "ignore the haters" seems fairly low.
| bredren wrote:
| 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.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Legitimately curious, what's the worst they could do with
| this data?
| b1ngb0n1 wrote:
| Aside from the personal details (name, address, etc),
| they can collect pricing info on houses, run analytics,
| and swoop the deal with a slightly better offer or better
| yet, sell it to wholesale buyers, reits, and whoever is
| interested in stealing the deal.
| scottishbee wrote:
| That...is not how mortgage servicing companies operate.
| gruez wrote:
| People aren't concerned about giving their details to a
| mortgage servicing company, they're concerned about
| giving their details to a random website called
| "closing.wtf", which promises to provide mortgage advice
| for free with no other obvious revenue source.
| Kiro wrote:
| > name, address, etc
|
| In my country all that plus your social security number
| and tax declarations etc are public information. What's
| your opinion on that?
| gruez wrote:
| >they can collect pricing info on houses, run analytics
|
| AFAIK house sale prices (ie. property transactions) are
| open in many (most?) jurisdictions.
|
| >and swoop the deal with a slightly better offer
|
| How does that even work? The winning bidder is presumably
| someone who gave the highest offer. Why would another
| company pay above and beyond that, considering that
| there's probably several other serious buyers who aren't
| willing to pay more?
| dumbfounder wrote:
| The terms are not public until the house is sold. In the
| contract pending state you don't know how much it is
| going to sell for. Theoretically if they saw a buyer
| accepting a crazy low offer they could alert the troops.
|
| But it doesn't need a lot of the data in that document,
| so really they need a way to redact all the unnecessary
| data to require less trust.
|
| Edit: words.
| gsharma wrote:
| The deal isn't always about the price. For example, a $1M
| house bought with $100K down and $900K mortgage is a
| worse deal for the seller as compared to $500K down and
| $500K financed. Assumption here is that it is more likely
| to get a $500K loan irrespective of the appraised value
| of the house.
|
| A lower all cash offer (say $975K) is likely a better
| offer for the seller because it reduces the risk for them
| and closes the transaction much quicker than a mortgage
| transaction.
|
| I have been a buyer in two transactions where my offer
| was slightly lower than the highest bidder, but with
| better terms.
| ryandrake wrote:
| As a home buyer, I've been beaten many times by an all-
| cash offer that was significantly lower than my financed
| offer. For example, a $450K all-cash offer where they'd
| close in 7 days beat my $525K 80/20 offer where it would
| have taken me 25+ days to close.
| AntiRush wrote:
| The most common scams around home buying are wire fraud -
| contact the buyer pretending to be the title company and
| steal their money. The data in a mortgage is exactly what
| you need to enable these scams and you're getting people
| to hand it to you and at the same time tell you they are
| about to wire money.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I have never done a wire transfer at a residential
| closing. I come to the closing at the title company
| office with a cashier's check from my bank for the amount
| they told me to bring.
| takeda wrote:
| Did you bought enough houses to assume that's always the
| case?
|
| My experience was that I was told to send the cashier's
| check using overnight FedEx because they did not have
| office in my area.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| No, fair enough. I would not close anywhere other than a
| local title company though. I've had a few odd things
| surface at the last minute that were resolvable because
| everyone was sitting around the same table.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| The only method available to me at closing was a wire
| transfer. It is dumb.
| zie wrote:
| Wire Transfers are not undoable and instant, much like
| Zelle. So I always recommend people send $10 first, and
| confirm everything works, before sending real money. When
| doing the confirmation, try using a different channel of
| communication, to ensure you are getting the right
| person. i.e. call them directly from known good phone
| numbers or something.
|
| Yes many banks charge $30 or more for a wire transfer,
| but I'd rather just pay the $60 than have a large sum
| wire transfer lost, stolen, etc.
|
| Some banks/Brokerages are sane and do not charge extra
| for wire transfers. Fidelity is one such. BOA also(if you
| have enough assets there, $100k will do it).
| lolinder wrote:
| Yep. When we closed on our house we got a whole lecture
| from the title company about how frequently data breaches
| lead to wire fraud and to not trust anyone. Mortgage
| originators are constantly under attack to try to get at
| the information that OP is asking people to just casually
| upload.
|
| Their aggressive dismissal of the concern is not a good
| look.
| aaln wrote:
| Thanks for the constructive feedback.
|
| I just added a way to easily download the entire privacy
| policy and terms of service, also quickly added an about
| page with some info about me - https://closing.wtf/about
|
| Eventually I'm going to get a certification and will keep
| your other points in mind.
| swatcoder wrote:
| 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.
| jjav wrote:
| > 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 4-digit closing
| fee?
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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."
| bastloing wrote:
| 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.
| 293984j29384 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Why would a name and a random property address have value
| before the transaction, but not after it?
| sangnoir wrote:
| Well, one is _before_ they spend a lot of money, and the
| other is after, and they are only prone to spear-phishing
| wire fraud on the Title deposit in only one of those
| scenarios. The victim is already primed, and indicated
| they have gobs of money set aside.
| lawls wrote:
| I uploaded a mortgage I know well, and the results were pretty
| accurate.
| aaln wrote:
| Thanks, did you see any interesting insights you're comfortable
| sharing?
| niyogi wrote:
| here, take my data but tell me nothing about yourself.
| aaln wrote:
| 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/privacy-policy
|
| I plan to go through SOC 2 / other compliancy certification in
| the near future. Happy to answer other questions
| brendanjbond wrote:
| 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!
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Some people suspect that is still how many of the AI startups
| operate
| simfree wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Reminds me of Mechanical Turk's old tagline: "Artificial
| Artificial Intelligence"
| shazmal wrote:
| Just checked out the tool it looks really interesting can
| definitely see the tremendous value to the standard consumer.
| thinkxl wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| ... 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.)
| aaln wrote:
| 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.
| yungporko wrote:
| oh a cool and useful idea on HN, i'm sure there won't be people
| rudely nitpicking and dismissing it in the comments for no real
| reason...
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Thank you!
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| 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
| jdcampolargo wrote:
| this is great!!! Thanks so much for making this!
|
| How are you handling the distribution?
| chasebank wrote:
| I wish I had this for payment processing.
| jdcampolargo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| right now ive been trying to export the PDF but it's annoying
| aaln wrote:
| Going to work on this feature and ship it early next week if
| you're still in the closing process then.
| aaln wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning this, I'm prioritizing this as a feature!
| Onavo wrote:
| What's the PDF parsing like?
| sccomps wrote:
| why upload the actual document? why not let users enter only
| numbers?
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| 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.
| aaln wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
|
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Just mining data. Please flag this.
| aoppaol wrote:
| 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?
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