Hacker News Reader

Comment by mh- | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, that's one of those "data smells" that makes me disregard the entire thing since they don't offer a credible (or any) explanation that explains a 3-way tie.

Reproducing here for reference:

    Florida             $98,670  17.0%
    Hawaii              $98,670  17.0%
    Washington, D.C.    $98,670  20.9%

View on HN

What's more the supposed source has completely different numbers... The most charitable explanation is probably that this was written by an LLM...

It's definitely written by someone who doesn't understand how mortgages work in the US. That "someone" could certainly be an LLM.

> However looking at the percentage of the total value put down as a down payment in those states (10%) indicates homebuyers there tend to have longer repayment plans.

edit: or being more charitable, I'm completely misinterpreting this passage? Down payments don't change the length of a mortgage.

Yes, they link to Bankrate [0] where FL has a median of $66k, HI is at $210k and CA at $141k. And the numbers they present at the lower end seem much too low as well. None of this makes sense.

[0] https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/average-down-payment/#wha...

I don't want to be this guy, but can we get this whole thing removed? the lack of integrity here seems anathema to HN

If it turns out it really was written by AI and these errors are as dumb as they look the whole domain should be blocked and the numerous past submissions from there removed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com