Cont. from here and here.

Cyberhomes
Cyberhomes <www.cyberhomes.com> features state-of-the art mapping integrated with a database of homes for sale. Users can drill-down from a map of the United States all the way to a particular street or neighborhood of interest. In participating cities, homes for sale are shown on the map for reference and carry full descriptions and pictures (see second screenshot below). Cyberhomes also has another distinction; it’s been able to attract at least one big name advertiser, Norwest (screenshot below).

Cyberhomes also offers up a “financial toolkit” with calculators and space allotted for banks, credit unions, insurance, and mortgage lending. It’s a valid concept, but today it’s basically empty except for one lender, All Pacific Mortgage, <www.all-pacific.com>, a division of Inland Mortgage, which advertises a five-minute “home buying purchasing power” analysis and 1% off loan costs.

Online Mortgage Explorer (OME)
Online Mortgage Explorer <www.themortgage.com> features an online application with an important feature, the ability to store your application information locally (on your hard drive) for future use. BofA also allows its Build Your Own Bank (OBR 10/95 p.7) users to pre-fill an application with information previously provided.

OME also has a Java-based mortgage calculator. Running an applet instead of querying the server makes for a much faster “what-if” calculator. But this one was pretty quirky on my computer (16 MB RAM, Win95, Netscape Navigator 3.0) and wasn’t particularly intuitive. But done right, applets are the way to go for speedy what-if calculations (see p. 10 for an even more advanced applet on Microsoft’s CarPoint).

Four Canadian lenders are associated with Online Mortgage Explorer: CIBC, The Mutual Group, FirstLine Mortgages, and Bank of Montreal, whose Cebra unit developed the site.