

SmartAsset (YC S12) Raises Money to Disrupt Financial Advice - mcarvin
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/15/smartasset-seed-funding/

======
chimi
The original title is, "Y Combinator-Backed Financial Decision Making Startup
SmartAsset Raises $900K" which is better, because they aren't _disrupting_
anything. If the title hadn't had 'disrupt' in it, I'd have been less likely
to roll my eyes.

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nickadams
Not to be confused with SmartWater: [http://www.thecoca-
colacompany.com/dynamic/press_center/site...](http://www.thecoca-
colacompany.com/dynamic/press_center/site/images/mainimages/glaceau---
smartwater-logo.jpg)

I know, I'm trolling. Sorry. But it's too similar. They should tweak it.

Moving on... for the most part it seems, big financial decisions like this are
usually summed up as: "It depends." It's just hard to make reasonable
recommendations since the answer is so dependent on each individual's
situation.

For home buying decisions specifically, once you get beyond rent vs. buy
calculations for X zip code, and into personal spending habits and discipline,
work situations, family history, future plans, market trends, investment
history and ability, and just general personal behavior, I can imagine it
getting very tricky. (Not to mention how do you trust the information provided
by the user without a personal relationship with that person or a decent
history? Is it pulled from some source? Or are you just asking them?)

I'm curious to see how they handle that.

If they can give actual advice tailored to the individual based on all that
supporting data, they have something. But if in the end it's just vague
recommendations (essentially, "it depends") then it's just more of the same.

Not to mention the privacy challenges that would come with gathering all that
data required to make solid recommendations.

Anyway, and interesting service worth keeping an eye on for sure. Tough nut to
crack, but if they do it, they'll stand out.

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casca
How is this different to the many other services that tell you how much house
you can get for your money? A pretty UI and being YC-backed does not a
"disruptor" make.

~~~
mcarvin
on the back-end we are: > ensuring our users qualify for mortgages based on
the zipcode and financial profile > further seeing if they qualify for any
government programs > running their taxes on a federal, state and local level
to understand if there are any tax benefits to home ownership (almost always
overestimated for lower incomes and underestimated for higher incomes) >
drawing on local real estate tax data > drawing on local transactional
expenses (including any transactional taxes you need to pay, like mortgage
recording tax in nyc) > the above, including your financial inputs are then
'modeled'. We actually build several different models for you, and through the
comparison of those models we can give advice on a level of accuracy that
could not previously be approached.

The result is utility, accuracy and ease of use that we believe is dramatic on
improvement on financial calculators. And we are really just scratching the
surface on what the modeling engine can do for many different decisions.

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codegeek
I love what these guys are attempting. Home buying is a combination of many
factors and anyone that can master the art of helping with this process will
surely be an important player in the market. Good luck with this.

~~~
mcarvin
Will never get tired of hearing that. Obviously have an enormous amount of
work to do but thanks.

~~~
codegeek
np. One thing that is a serious pain point of mine right now is help selecting
the right location to buy. Other than finances/budget, location is key in real
estate as we all know. Do you have a plan to be able to build this feature
later ? For example, I work in NYC and my wife works in Central NJ. We have to
select a house that works best in terms of commute, preference of size, etc.
You get the point. If I can get help with that, I am even willing to pay :)

~~~
mcarvin
Thanks for the heads up. Will see what we can do!

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tolos
I had no idea closing costs were so high (~6%). Guess I'll be waiting to buy a
house for a little longer than I thought.

~~~
jlongster
It depends on the area. That is high for where I live. The seller has to pay
6% to the realtors, but the costs for the buyer varies a lot.

Also, you can ask for the seller to cover a lot of your closing costs. Even if
they take that money from the price of the home (and it goes up or doesn't
come down as much), you get more money towards your down payment. Try to have
as large of a down payment as possible.

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bking
I ran through the whole system, and I noticed that If I use the sliders in the
info-graphic to change the down payment, it doesn't update that value in the
"How Much House Can I Afford" Down payment text box. Is there a backwards
refresh in the system?

Also, I didn't notice a "reset" button. Any thoughts?

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AznHisoka
As usual, success will depend on having lots of scalable, indexable content
with lots of Google juice. Not just tools.

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aresant
Brilliant service, quick suggestion - the database that matches IP-to-City
that you're using to auto-fill "Your Location" on the "taxesintro" page and
others is inaccurate.

Got my city wrong by ~15 miles.

Interesting because it was IDENTICALLY inaccurate to a project I was working
on a few weeks ago, we upgraded to <http://www.maxmind.com/app/city> and that
got it dialed in, imagine it would for you too (or if you're using their DB
already, pay for the upgrade - we do once a quarter).

~~~
mcarvin
Wow, thanks for that. Will definitely look into it.

~~~
ktsmith
I filled out the mortgage estimation tool and in three separate cases it
suggested trying to find a house with a negative value.

~~~
mcarvin
thanks for the note. can you email us at info at smartasset dot com with the
inputs you used?

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rodly
I'm guessing the author of this HN post is an employee at SmartAsset.
Sensationalism only works on stupid people (read: for a long duration).

