Compare Mortgage Rates Easily With SmartLoans.sg
February 6, 2009 by Gwendolyn Regina T
If you’ve always found comparing bank loan rates to be tedious and time-consuming, SmartLoans aims to make the whole process of getting a new home loan or refinancing your mortgage easy. From the same guys who brought us HomeSpace and RentSpace, SmartLoans is their latest real estate tool geared at the individual consumer.
How it works
Their website is not up yet but the founder allowed me to take a peak at the latest offering. I tried out the wizard to refinance my mortgage and was taken through a series of questions about my current loan (how much of it is left etc.) and what kind of new loan I am looking for (fixed or floating rate?). There were only two-three pages of questions, but what made the whole process simple was that beside each question was an explanation to help the user understand what the question was looking for and the implications of it.
For example, in deciding whether I wanted a Fixed or Floating rate for my new loan, they wrote:
“Fixed rates are usually higher than floating rates because banks cannot charge higher rates on fixed rate home loans should the interest rates rise after you take the loan.
If you expect interest rates to rise during the tenure of your loan, then you should take a fixed rate loan. If you expect the interest rate to fall, floating loans may be more advantageous. If you are not one to regularly monitor the market, fixed rates would offer you peace of mind and you can rest assured of your monthly payment amounts.”
These are helpful little points that guide as well as educate the user.
Easy to understand
Its presentation of the available loans I can take comes in two easy-to-understand formats: a nice chart that shows you the least cumulative interest you have to pay for your loan, and in a corresponding table form. The amounts are shown at present-day value.
Select the loans you’re interested in and SmartLoans will forward your indication(s) of interest to bankers. Then sit and wait for them to contact you soon.
Business model
What’s great is the team has made deals with most major banks in Singapore (7 so far) to get their data on loans. How SmartLoans makes money is via commissions. Simple business model.
I would say the difficult part is inking the deals in the first place as I imagine it would be a tad challenging to convince the banks to give their information to be aggregated and compared side-by-side against competitors. But this might encourage banks to offer better deals. No matter, the individual consumer wins.
What might be missing are qualitative characteristics of the banks backing these loans. Some variables that customers might be concerned include level of customer service and how quickly the banks approve the loans. Although I think the inclusion of such qualitative variables would be valuable to some users, to most, a pure quantitative comparison is more than good enough. This is what SmartLoans accomplishes beautifully here.
Launching soon!
SmartLoans is aiming to launch in two weeks. So watch out for it!
About The Author
Gwendolyn Regina T - Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Apart from SGE, Gwen is also a Partner at Thymos Capital, where she focuses on early stage investments in technology firms. She has had two exits out of her investments via the firm, one of which is iHipo. A frequent judge for business competitions both locally and overseas, she graduated from the National University of Singapore. Gwen also spent some time in Silicon Valley and studied in Stanford University under the NUS Overseas College programme. Gwen is a mentor at Spanish incubator Tetuan Valley, Polish incubator Gamma Rebels, the Singapore Ambassador for the Sandbox network and the Singapore curator for StartupDigest. She enjoys languages, travelling, dance and adventure sports. Gwen can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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