plummeting_prices Posted October 6, 2005 Share Posted October 6, 2005 Hey people, Just thought I'd post this now that it's finished. I have learned some programming skills and whacked together some software over the past few months with regards to mortgages. The software will tell you many things. Heres an example of what it does: Calculates Your Monthly Repayment Calculates how much you can borrow - given your monthly repayments, mortgage term and interest rates Calculate how long it'll take to repay the mortgage - given the mortgage amount, monthly repayment and interest rate Calculates how much sooner you'd pay it off with £X extra per week Calculates your repayments if interest rates go up or down Checks if you're better off buying or renting and a few other nifty tricks Please note that I am NOT spamming here. Although I'd like some monetary appreciation for my effort, I am allowing you to download the software for free. It's up to you if you'd like to donate a few pound. Heck, if a few people donate a few pound I'll even take your comments on this board and enhance the software and add new features. Download Software Here If you decide to donate some money get in touch at ronanmcgrory@gmail.com - even £1-£2 lying around in your paypal or nochex account would be much appreciated. Even if you decide not to donate any money, please post your opinion on the software. Thanks and Regards, Ronan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted October 6, 2005 Share Posted October 6, 2005 All those functions can be done in Excel, and much better as you can have graphs and all, differing amounts etc... If you haven't got Excel I guess this program would be ok. Other than that, its ok I guess! (I need my pennies to buy a house my friend) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spline Posted October 6, 2005 Share Posted October 6, 2005 With mortgage calculators I can never seem to decide which is the ‘proper’ formula to use – for example, if you put in 100k repayment mortgage, 5% APR, and 25 years, what would be the monthly payments? Not all calculators give the same answer – some online ones: BBC £591.27 Charcol £584.59 – mortgage companies favour this one. But the answers could be 591.2704775, 584.5900181, or 578.1382026 depending on the method of converting between monthly and yearly compounding. For example: > fsolve(100000=annuity(m*12,0.05,25),m); 591.2704775 > fsolve(100000=annuity(m,0.05/12,25*12),m); 584.5900181 > fsolve(100000=annuity(m,(1+0.05)^(1/12)-1,25*12),m); 578.1382026 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted October 6, 2005 Share Posted October 6, 2005 (edited) =D11*B11/(1-(1/(POWER((1+D11),C11)))) Where D11 = Interest Rate (as a Percentage) B11 = Mortgage Value C11 = Term (Years) This gives the annual repayment cost, dived by 12 to get the monthly cost! (The BBC are correct in your example) Edited October 6, 2005 by Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spline Posted October 6, 2005 Share Posted October 6, 2005 Ah yes, but most ‘official’ mortgage calculators use the second formula, and say £584.59. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plummeting_prices Posted October 6, 2005 Author Share Posted October 6, 2005 Yeah, I fully agree with the comment about Excel. However, doing these calculations in Excel requires a certain level of computer literacy which not everyone has. The calculator I developed aims to simplify the process. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spline Posted October 6, 2005 Share Posted October 6, 2005 PP - Which version does your program do - compound 300 times at Rate/12 (Charcol), 25 times at R and divide by 12 (BBC), or even something else? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plummeting_prices Posted October 6, 2005 Author Share Posted October 6, 2005 PP - Which version does your program do - compound 300 times at Rate/12 (Charcol), 25 times at R and divide by 12 (BBC), or even something else? Hi, I've just double checked. My program uses the Charcol method. I decided to use this method because it is what the majority of the online mortgage company calculators seem to use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plummeting_prices Posted October 10, 2005 Author Share Posted October 10, 2005 Has noone else any comments/suggestions on my mortgage calculator then??? I'd like any suggestions to add new features to it if possible!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
since the beginning Posted October 10, 2005 Share Posted October 10, 2005 Has noone else any comments/suggestions on my mortgage calculator then??? I'd like any suggestions to add new features to it if possible!!! New feature would be not to use Visual Basic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plummeting_prices Posted October 10, 2005 Author Share Posted October 10, 2005 And what would your reasons for not to use visual basic be?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThePiltdownMan Posted October 10, 2005 Share Posted October 10, 2005 (edited) My suggestion would be to make it less that 2.9Mb Also, show a graph of the payment and the proportion of the payment that is interest as time goes by. Show any overpayments in another colour Allow people to change the parameters and see the effects in real time. Edited October 10, 2005 by ThePiltdownMan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dinsdale Posted October 10, 2005 Share Posted October 10, 2005 And what would your reasons for not to use visual basic be?? Programmer snobbery. You're supposed to sweat away writing it in a really low level language so it will be a few milliseconds faster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dapperdave Posted October 10, 2005 Share Posted October 10, 2005 http://www.interestratecalculator.com/mortgage/index.html another useful calculator, you don't need to download and plots charts for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pod Posted October 10, 2005 Share Posted October 10, 2005 Check this out... http://www.jeacle.ie/mortgage/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dlone Posted October 10, 2005 Share Posted October 10, 2005 Anyone used trigold before? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
non-FTBer Posted October 11, 2005 Share Posted October 11, 2005 The other issue is downloading dodgy VB software that somebody uploads to a public web forum.... Why bother when there are free tools out there that do not need downloading. Oh, and VB is crap. Try Java or build it into a Flash movie using actionScript.... much better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Running Bear Posted October 11, 2005 Share Posted October 11, 2005 Somebody on here posted this calculator, and it is fab http://www.jeacle.ie/mortgage/eu/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Charlie The Tramp Posted October 11, 2005 Share Posted October 11, 2005 A member has complained that the download link crashes his Windows98SE, so beware Windows98SE users. I had no problem with Windows 2000 pro. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
since the beginning Posted October 11, 2005 Share Posted October 11, 2005 And what would your reasons for not to use visual basic be?? Don't you care about us linux users Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pod Posted October 11, 2005 Share Posted October 11, 2005 Somebody on here posted this calculator, and it is fab http://www.jeacle.ie/mortgage/eu/ That was me... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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