myHomeCalc iphone app, your thoughts?

[Munchine]

Hi Everyone,

I thought you may be interested in an app I have just released on the iPhone. Below is a brief summary, and you can get more details by clicking on www.cajgi.com.au. The app dynamically link in Stamp Duty with your mortgage and calculates LMI, LVR, cost of land, and the Auction Day Assistance. Please have a look, and feel free to comment, I really want to make it the best out there. BTW, it is FREE.

Please click here to download it from iTunes.

myHomeCalc
is the ultimate iPhone app to help you purchase a property in Australia. Key features are:

• Stamp Duty Calculator
• Mortgage Registration and Transfer Fees
• First Home Owner Grant and other State Concessions
• Principle Place of Residence
• Incorporate Vacant Land
• Loan Calculator
• Loan Term Payment Frequency and types
• Lender Mortgage Insurance Estimator
• Loan to Valuation Ratio Calculator
• Land Size Calculator with value per square meters
• Auction Day Assistance Explore the 'what-if' when purchasing the property.
• Email the entire calculations to family, friends or customers.

 

[pdawg]

Munchine,

Looks and sounds prospective

Will check it out over the weekend.

Already have iHome, MyLoanCalc and myTaxStates so will compare to those apps and give you some feedback shortly.

Just off the top of my head at the time I was looking for such apps, I wanted a feature that had current market homeloan products with their interest rates listed. That would have been really handy.

Also is there a loan comparison feature as well? iHome and MyLoanCalc have these.

 

[Munchine]

Hi pdawg,

I looked at the other apps before I started mine so I had to decide what functionality to add and what TBD. I did not do the loan comparison but it is on my to do list for the next version.

You mentioned that you would like to see it get the current market homeloan products with their interest rates listed, since I am not affiliated with any lender, and there's so many products out there, it became all too hard. Do I keep to the 4 majors and use only the standard variable rate? or do I put a link in there and it opens up a their website and the user needs to decide?

Please keep the comments coming ...

 

[Peter_Tersteeg]

Just off the top of my head at the time I was looking for such apps, I wanted a feature that had current market homeloan products with their interest rates listed. That would have been really handy.

That would be a good trick given that these can change daily. Mortgage brokers pay substantial amounts of money for software that provides this and other information. Many of the websites that have this sort of summary on them are out of date by the time it's published and don't really disclose the full story any way. Many lenders have products where the rates vary depending on your circumstances.

I'm pretty sure I could write an application that does this, but the average consumer wouldn't be able to operate it to be completely accurate. It wouldn't be free either because it costs money to keep this info up to date.

Nice looking app. Most of the info is easily available but it's useful to have it all in one place.

My only objection is that it's for the iphone. I refuse to buy one of these because I don't trust Apple (you need to connect to iTunes and enter a credit card just to activate the phone, very alarming). Port it to the Windows mobile platform and I'll give it a try.

 

[Gentle_Chief]

Hi pdawg,

I looked at the other apps before I started mine so I had to decide what functionality to add and what TBD. I did not do the loan comparison but it is on my to do list for the next version.

You mentioned that you would like to see it get the current market homeloan products with their interest rates listed, since I am not affiliated with any lender, and there's so many products out there, it became all too hard. Do I keep to the 4 majors and use only the standard variable rate? or do I put a link in there and it opens up a their website and the user needs to decide?

Please keep the comments coming ...

If your app can provide past sales History of a particular property or a street, that would take the crown off all other apps out there.

And then I would chuck my blackberry and buy an iphone ..... with you app on my homepage

 

[csc2]

Hi Everyone,

I thought you may be interested in an app I have just released on the iPhone. Below is a brief summary, and you can get more details by clicking on www.cajgi.com.au. The app dynamically link in Stamp Duty with your mortgage and calculates LMI, LVR, cost of land, and the Auction Day Assistance. Please have a look, and feel free to comment, I really want to make it the best out there. BTW, it is FREE.

Please click here to download it from iTunes.

myHomeCalc
is the ultimate iPhone app to help you purchase a property in Australia. Key features are:

• Stamp Duty Calculator
• Mortgage Registration and Transfer Fees
• First Home Owner Grant and other State Concessions
• Principle Place of Residence
• Incorporate Vacant Land
• Loan Calculator
• Loan Term Payment Frequency and types
• Lender Mortgage Insurance Estimator
• Loan to Valuation Ratio Calculator
• Land Size Calculator with value per square meters
• Auction Day Assistance Explore the 'what-if' when purchasing the property.
• Email the entire calculations to family, friends or customers.

excellent stuff!

keep expanding on this for other phones....

 

[pdawg]

Hi pdawg,

I looked at the other apps before I started mine so I had to decide what functionality to add and what TBD. I did not do the loan comparison but it is on my to do list for the next version.

You mentioned that you would like to see it get the current market homeloan products with their interest rates listed, since I am not affiliated with any lender, and there's so many products out there, it became all too hard. Do I keep to the 4 majors and use only the standard variable rate? or do I put a link in there and it opens up a their website and the user needs to decide?

Please keep the comments coming ...

I imagine it would be quite difficult to maintain and as PT_Bear pointed could turn out to be outdated... Just wishful thinking I guess

Yes what you suggested about linking to the lender's site would come in handy IMO. Because there are so many products out there... potentially just the most popular products giving users some direction or idea about what's out there (The list can be as big or as small as you deem fit)? That way the responsibilty of accurate rates is on the lenders and for the user to decide.

Also does this feature include Amortization Schedules?

Loan Term Payment Frequency and types

 

[pdawg]

OK Munchine - I've had a chance to download and test the app. Here are my thoughts:

Pros:

* Great on the fly calculator. If I quickly wanted to make a loan calculation, I could.

* Pushing the repayments frenquency field would toggle between the frequencies yet still retaining the scroll option.

* The features such as NSW stamp duty calculators, concessions, fees all come in handy and are very easy to use.

* Email options to export calculations.

Cons (Please correct me if I am not using it right or the feature(s) is not yet available):

* Unable to retain and compare details of more than one loan or property (like iHome) - This was important to me in my search of both the home loan product and which property I decided to buy at the time.

* Loan amount scroll at the front takes up alot of space which maybe better used providing other information? This may just be a personal perference but I feel tapping on the field to enter the loan amount is sufficient.

 

[Munchine]

Cons (Please correct me if I am not using it right or the feature(s) is not yet available):

* Unable to retain and compare details of more than one loan or property (like iHome) - This was important to me in my search of both the home loan product and which property I decided to buy at the time.

* Loan amount scroll at the front takes up alot of space which maybe better used providing other information? This may just be a personal perference but I feel tapping on the field to enter the loan amount is sufficient.

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, it doesn't compare loans as I did leave it out but it seems that it is a valuable tool. So I WILL put it in the next version.

The scroll on the front page is actually the purchase price of the property. My logic with that was for the Auction Day Assistance. I often go to an auction and I had everything pre-organised and wanted to see what happens to my loan, LVR, $/sqm as the Auction proceeds. So the tumbler (Apple calls them pickerview) was used to you can easily move the ten thousand digit as he increases it by $10,000 bids etc ...

• In answer to the other questions, no it does not have an amortisation table but all the logic is there, so I can put it in relatively easily (next version).
  
• I do plan to port it to Andriod.
  
• It doesn't give you recent sale prices for the area. It would cost me too much money to buy the data. I can't compete against RPData nor CBA

Again thanks for the feedback.

 

[regrow]

[*]I do plan to port it to Andriod.[*]

When do you plan to do this?

Regards

Regrow

 

[pdawg]

The scroll on the front page is actually the purchase price of the property. My logic with that was for the Auction Day Assistance. I often go to an auction and I had everything pre-organised and wanted to see what happens to my loan, LVR, $/sqm as the Auction proceeds. So the tumbler (Apple calls them pickerview) was used to you can easily move the ten thousand digit as he increases it by $10,000 bids etc ...

By that logic, I see it's merits though I'm too irrational at auctions

I do plan to port it to Andriod.

That's great! Alot of people I know are shifting to the HTC Desire including myself in the very near future (once my contract is up).

 

[Munchine]

Ok, I've done the amortization table. I have never been a big fan because the table assumes a constant interest rate over the period of a loan. If the rate changes it becomes a very sophisticated model. Furthermore, a lot of the Amortization tables that are on the app store, dumps a monthly repayment line item for the life of the loan. This may be 360 lines for a 30 year loan. I’m not sure how useful that would be.

Since the hard work of the calculations are there, I decided to do an abridged version, showing the loan over yearly intervals.

The following is the output that you can email in the next version of myHomeCalc. Have a look at the attachment. What do you think?

 

[Munchine]

The next version of myHomeCalc is undergoing beta testing. New features include

•Amortization Table
•Cash Flow Analysis
•Conversion between square meter, square feet and squares.

There's two cashflow reports, one based on the existing settings. The second report is where you would secure against another property and looking for maximum negative gearing. In this situation you would borrow 100% of the property value plus goverment fees including Stamp Duty. This option also assumes Interest Only loans.

Check it out http://cajgi.com.au/apps/myHomeCalc/v110.htm

Love to get some feedback before it goes to Apple

 

[aaarghhh]

Hello

Why re-invent the wheel again with another investment analyser iphone app?

Consider a JV with the man, "Ian Somers" and his highly successful PIA software and porting PIA across to the iphone android etc....

This could be a better revenue stream for you leveraging an already proven seller.

Aaron