Geekabode

How to read your Geekabode result

Updated October 2026. Educational information only. Not financial, tax or legal advice. The tool estimates from numbers you enter and public data. It cannot predict prices or rates.

The page runs in a fixed order: Today, then Your numbers, then Answer. Here is what each part says and what it deliberately does not say.

Today

The first section is titled "Today's rate. This week's news." It carries the 30-year rate, the date of the observation and a source link, plus news items that each link to their publisher. The news panel can be genuinely empty: the page says so rather than filling the space with something old.

Your numbers

Required: "City or ZIP", "Home price" (or the monthly payment you can carry), and "Down payment". Optional but important: "Current rent (per month)", "Buying timeline", "Loan term". Two collapsible groups hold the rest:

The note above that group reads: "These drive the scenario table. The defaults are starting points, not advice; change any value to match your case." The defaults are placeholders that make the table compute, not recommendations about your home.

Then press Run the analysis. No account is needed. The Answer opens directly under the form.

Answer: why no direction while rent is blank

The headline paragraph is "Buy now or wait: your answer". Its first line is a single dollar sentence. If "Current rent (per month)" is blank, the page prints this instead:

Add your current rent to see whether buying now or waiting costs less.

and the count line beneath says:

Across all N scenarios, the waiting side leaves rent out, so no direction is shown until you fill in Current rent.

Why: the waiting side of the comparison is rent paid while you wait. Without a rent figure that side is incomplete, so any claim about which option costs less would be an artefact of the blank field. The figures you do have are still shown. A link, Add your current rent, sits in the Answer so you do not have to hunt back up the page. Enter 0 if you genuinely pay no rent now.

What "Not counted" means

Under the headline, a line reads: "Total cost of buying now X. Total cost of waiting Y. Totals cover the full loan term, not discounted." Then, if some costs are unknown:

Not counted: property tax, insurance, HOA.

That list names the inputs you left blank. A missing figure is never treated as zero. Each unfilled field also shows as "Unknown" in the "Monthly cost breakdown" list ("Principal and interest", "Property tax", "Homeowners insurance", "HOA", "Maintenance", "PMI"), so the hole is visible in the arithmetic itself. A line under the answer spells out the consequence:

Costs you leave blank are not counted.

Another note says what the totals are built on: "Based on: rent held flat, maintenance at X% of the price a year, closing costs at X% of the price, selling costs not counted." Selling costs are left out on purpose, and the page says so rather than burying it.

The scenario table

The Answer contains "All scenarios and calculation details". One table per wait horizon, headed with columns such as "What this row assumes", "Rate change", "Price change", "What buying now costs (includes interest over the full loan term)", "What waiting costs (includes interest over the full loan term)" and "Waiting costs more or less (negative means less) (includes interest over the full loan term)". The first three rows are shown; a Show all N rows control reveals the rest. Nothing is dropped.

Each row is a what-if, not a prediction. Rows come from your editable assumption lists, plus one row labelled "Official forecast (Fannie Mae, Month Year)" when the bundled forecast covers that horizon. The section's own caveats read "Scenarios, not forecasts." and "Educational estimate, not financial advice". A section below the table, "If refinancing never becomes attractive", shows the baseline in which the buy-now loan stays at today's rate for its full term. An Explore a scenario selector switches the headline dollar sentence between rows, so you can see how much the answer depends on the moves you typed in.

The rate and its date, and the stale label

The rate the calculator used is always stated, with the observation date:

If you edit any field after a run, the line "Your numbers changed. Run again to update this answer." appears. If a re-run fails, the answer from your last run stays on screen under "This run could not use those entries. The answer below is from your last run."

The optional written read

Below the Answer, under the heading Written summary, there is a button Get the written read. It is described on the page as "A plain-language read of your scenarios. Every figure links to its source."

What it is: a written explanation of the numbers already in your Answer, generated from those numbers plus the public evidence on the page, with figures linked to their sources. The page labels it "Educational decision support, not advice or a forecast".

What it is not: it does not change the arithmetic, does not predict prices or rates, and is not a lender, broker or agent.

Before you press it:

The calculator needs no account and needs no read. Everything in the calculator results is visible after pressing Run the analysis on https://geekabode.com. The optional personal written read is separate: it needs a confirmed-email sign-in and a request of its own, and it may be unavailable.

Sections after Answer

"Compare cities" puts your city next to up to four others. "Find a good deal" and "Analyze a house" depend on services that are not running today; when they are paused the page says so and hides the form. Neither is needed for a buy-versus-wait comparison.

Start here

Go to https://geekabode.com, enter your city or ZIP, your down payment, and either a home price or the monthly payment you can carry, type your real current rent, and press Run the analysis. Read the "Not counted" line before you read the headline. Then change one assumption at a time and watch which one moves the answer.