[vgeek]

Good idea. A few years back I built https://originationdata.com that compares mortgage lenders (both FDIC & FCUA members) using HMDA data. I modeled rates by lender, product type as well as by facets like MSA (as well as STL FRED data, too). It grew for a few years and I was ecstatic-- getting backlinks organically from some impressive sites (e.g. larger banks themselves, consumer publications) as well as positive user feedback. Then Google pushed their "Helpful Content Update" and Google search traffic absolutely tanked, so I kind of abandoned it and moved onto other projects that won't be SEO oriented, since Google's view of quality is unbeknownst to me.

[ekjhgkejhgk]

Hey I really like the aesthetics.

> Then Google pushed their "Helpful Content Update" and...

May I just say, no matter what you work on, a separate piece of work will be getting people to know about it.

So fine, people can no longer find you on google. But if your website is truly useful, people will keep talking about it and linking to it, no?

Anyway, what are you working on now?

[vgeek]

Users are broken into two separate buckets: industry and consumers. Industry users keep using the site, based on the number of visitors with 50+ visits coming in directly every weekday. The site also gets cited by organizations with regard to their fees and rankings within geographies. This kind of proves the utility for at least this demographic.

Consumers, for a product such as mortgage, will be fragmented and infrequent users, who will only be in-market for a mortgage for a ~3-6 month window every X years. For this audience, discoverability is what matters-- and they will simply go to a search engine and look for "cincinnati mortgages" for which Google will gladly show 8-12 ads with CPCs of $20. An objective ranking based on rates and fees is useful for the consumer, but not an ad network who would rather drive multiple clicks on paid ads. Being objective and useful isn't enough to play in the space, unfortunately.

[gbasin]

I still use this regularly :) thanks for building it. any interest in open sourcing? i can help

[mhashemi]

Oh snap! I was just looking at originationdata.com this week! So awesome. I had originally hoped HMDA data was more than annual, but no luck. It's also a shame that the current admin turned off the data stream here: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/explore-rates/

I thought maybe you'd been hit by that update, but even more bummed to hear Google enshittification struck again.

[vgeek]

The Modified LAR product is what you may want to look at, then. Yes, it is annual, but if you aren't against modeling data, look at the rate spread value, segment then project vs current FRED data and you'll get pretty close to actuals. You can also extract fees and derive APR in addition to having APY data.