Some months ago I created The Bubblizer. After many revisions and a lot of incredibly thoughtful input from readers here and over at Patrick.net, I believe we have a fairly useful model for analyzing the decision about buying a home in the current environment.
But this model is in Excel, and is therefore out of reach of many folks...
I've attempted to transfer the model to "Web Spreadsheets" like iRows, without success. The Bubblizer utilizes some VBA, Solver, and many of the complex formulae not available in those Web Spreadsheets. Anyways, the model was created for a fairly sophisticated audience. People who already understand the time-value-of-money, loan amortization, and the notion of Present Value.
What I'm interested in now is seeing if we can streamline a version of The Bubblizer as a simple, intuitive web application. It should capture the spirit of the original model:
- Show the user what kind of debt and total ownership costs they would be facing.
- Provide an affordability view, that helps them determine if they can afford these costs.
- Highlight for the potential buyer what the "next buyer" will have to buy their home for in order for them to break-even. That is, the "is this reasonable or simply insane" test.
- Allow the user to tinker with what-if's regarding boom or bust scenarios.
Of course, paring that down into a simple web app is no small task.
Any ideas are helpful. I'm also looking for someone to volunteer to help me with the project. I have the resources, I just need some folks willing to help me design, test, code, etc.
Randy,
You don't need to code anything. You should use Microsoft Office SharePoint Excel Services (in 2007 version) to convert this to a web app automitically.
Posted by: News | Thursday, September 07, 2006 at 23:42
News,
Thanks. I actually haven't kept up on Office 2007. I used to get everything in the MSDN, but I lost my subscription to that a couple years ago.
I'll put this on hold until I can see what I can get out of the box from the new round of MS products.
Posted by: randolfe | Friday, September 08, 2006 at 06:20
Randy,
Office 2007 at the end of this year/early next year but you can get a free beta of Office SharePoint 2007 right now. I think there will be a few sites hosting the full 2007 release soon.
What you will be able to do is define the parameters that you want users to control. You can hide any data or formulas that you consider proprietary.
Posted by: News | Friday, September 08, 2006 at 14:13
News,
Can you give a quick overview of how the architecture works? I assume that all clients will need Excel07 as a viewer, or is there a lightweight viewer? Also, does the hosting require newer .NET services? I'm just curious because I know that my current hosting service only just recently upgraded to .NET 2003 capabilities. It could be a while before many hosts upgrade. And then there's the fact that I'm increasingly running into corporate and personal firewalls that block .NET.
Of course, these are all the reasons the "web 2.0" crowd gives for staying away from MSFT solutions. I'm personally agnostic and believe that the value is in the application, which will always drive acceptance of the underlying infrastructure.
Posted by: randolfe | Saturday, September 09, 2006 at 07:32
Randy,
Unfortunately Excel Services are not going to work. VBA is not going to be supported. http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2005/12/01/499206.aspx. Native Solver implementation Solver.xll probably is not going to work ether. It is not thread safe.
Posted by: zacotovsky | Monday, October 09, 2006 at 02:48
Zacotovsky,
I hadn't been keeping up on Excel Services. If they don't support VBA, then what is the real business value to Excel Services? Sometimes I don't know about MSFT.
Looks like a web version will be the best approach.
Posted by: randolfe | Monday, October 09, 2006 at 06:39