Spicer Matthews

Something that has been on my mind for a while now is; What does the new age business person looks like? As more and more consumer dollars are being spend online and less and less spent in person on the streets, how does this affect the first time entrepreneur? Really great companies have been built by people with simple resumes. I see in many ways it is becoming harder and harder for a first time entrepreneur to break ground on their dream because they have to do business on the web.

It use to just take someone that was willing to work long hard hours and maybe some start up capital to build a truly profitable business. Whatever business the entrepreneur was going to go into they did not have to have 20 years of experience working in the industry, however in many cases that helped. I have a close friend who went to college and graduated with a business degree. Other than odd college jobs this friend did not have much of a resume. He knew one thing; he did not want to work for “the man”, and he was willing to work his butt of to make it happen. After much research he raised a small amount of capital and went into the fast food business. Today he has grown the business rather successfully. All this friend had was a passion and a good head on his shoulders.

When it comes to hardware and operating systems I am one of the biggest Apple fan boys out there. When it comes to software and control I am truly annoyed by Apple. As a side note I am an Apple share holder and I love what they do from a business stand point. Apple has held back music players for years. They released iTunes a long time ago and it blew all the music players out of the water. Back then compiled desktop based software was cool. Then they went full speed ahead with the Apple iTunes music store. This was amazing from a lets kill cd’s standpoint.

I have a library of music that I have gotten from all different sources; Amazon, iTunes, cd rips, and so on. I want to stuff all this music in one bloat free place and have it with me everywhere I go. If I am 100% an Apple user this place is iTunes, but I am not. I have an Android phone, a windows netbook, linux laptop, Apple desktop, Apple laptop. There is no easy way with iTunes to keep all these devices in sync when it comes to my music. Nor do I want my 13 Gig music stash living on all these devices. The service that was about to do all this was Lala.com until Apple purchased then and closed them down. Grooveshark.com has sort of done it but their way of doing things is a little odd and they use way to much flash.

As many of you know, I am a big follower of the world in terms of money flow. I love all aspects of investment. I love all aspects of business. No one would ever call me a hippy. I am as capitalistic as they come. Most would say I would sell my first born to make a buck. While not true you get the point.

All while I aline myself with the group of people that think profit is the end all be all. One thing that I think capitalistic America does so well is giving back. This is something I do not think any other capital based country does as well as the US. We give back on a constant bases and will really rally when called to action.

Overview

The point I am going to make in this post is you can use the different markets outside of Real Estate to help with timing your Real Estate transactions. Great timing can do wonders for your bottom line. I have to setup my point so read all the way through. I will put it all together at the end.

To continue my argument that I believe that at the very least if you are a Real Estate investor you should have an eye on different markets outside of the Real Estate world I am going to highlight Mortgage Back Securities and what it means for the common Real Estate investor.

First lets define what a Mortgage Back Security is, or MBS. More or less a MBS is a bond sold on wall street from the big government backed firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These loans are originated by banks we all know and love. Then the banks sell these loans off to Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac in big pools (collections of mortgages). For example (and to keep things simple), lets say Bank of America lent out 100 thousand dollars to 10 people (total of 1 million dollars). Bank of America collected a bunch of fees for putting the loan together (from the borrower), also mostly likely will get to continue to service the loan (charge more fees for the service of collecting loan payments). Now, BofA will sell this pool of loans to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. So the amount of loans BofA is willing to make each week/month/year is almost a factor of how willing Freddie and Fannie are willing to buy the loans.
Once the pool of loans are sold and out of the bank’s hands, Fannie and Freddie then bundle the loans up into bigger pools and sells them off on Wall Street as bonds. So when you make your home mortgage payment you send the money to your bank, then the bank send your payment to Fannie and Freddie, and then Fannie an Freddie sends your payment to the owner of the bond. You can learn way more about this process at Wikipedia.

Why should you understand all this?

It is one big chain of influencers; The seller, the buyer (borrower), the bank, Fannie/Freddie, and the bond holder. Each phase of this chain relays on entity below it. So lets look at each phase.

I can not express how excited I am about Elevation Fitness. A product designed for personal trainers to keep track of their clients. I have been working on this project with an amazing team of people for over 2 years, and I am happy to say we went into private beta this week.

Elevation attempts to do away with paper and pencil for personal trainers and move their client management to the Cloud (where we all know my favorite place to be is). If you are interested please signup for the private beta and let me know what you think.

Paul Wagner, (CEO of Forkfly), sent me this YouTube video today of Steve Jobs talking about how they build products. He outright says he looks around at what others are doing and shamelessly steals them. Apple then takes the stolen ideas and puts their own twist on the product often makes it much much better.

Through my past client, and now through my work with startups I am constantly running into people that want to reinvent the wheel. They want to start from the ground up as if there are no great ideas out there to steal. In the web world I am very very confident that if you are trying to build something there is an idea you can steal and make better. I think every project should start with finding an example to build from. I don’t believe in just trying to build something without a stolen idea as the foundation.

From my first post (Real Estate Vs. Da Stock Market – Part #1) many people contacted me and told me that they disagreed with me. The stock market and the Real Estate market were not the same. Many people expressed that they liked Real Estate, (and made it their “thing”), because they had far more control over the investment. You can pick your tenants, you can pick your lender, you can remodel, and so on. While in the stock market you have no control unless you have the capital to be a major share holder. All you have is the ability to cast your vote in a share holder meeting. While this is true, in fact you do not have much control over the direction of the company you own stock in, you have control over if you own the asset or not. In terms of personal wealth, this is way more powerful than than the direct control you have with Real Estate. Having the ability to liquidate your ownership in an asset within seconds is very powerful. When managing your assets their is two parts; growing your assets, and protecting your assets.

Wise investors can spot a downturn coming, such as the one in late 2007. No one really knows how bad a downturn is really going to be, but a wise investor should know when to shift from capital appreciation mode to capital protection mode. Below are the things you can do to protect your stock and real estate assets in a downturn.

One of the things that drives me nuts, is when I hear people say “Real Estate is my thing”, or “Real Estate is what I am into”. It is not a drug it is an investment! You buy Real Estate, (as an investment), for it to go up in value and maybe collect rent. Hmmm, that sounds just like buying a stock, and the rent would be the dividend (or even a stock buy back). Real Estate, (from an investment standpoint), is not a way of life. It is not something you are into. It is not “your thing”. It is 100% an investment. So many people, particularly young people, don’t get that. With this post I am kicking off a series of blog postings talking about the importance of understanding all markets not just the one “you are into”.

First of all lets clear somethings up. When I say Real Estate investment I am not talking about your home, or a vacation home. Those have personal emotional aspects; you need a home to live in and you love staying at your ski condo on the weekends. I label these assets as personal property, there is a luxury element you may or may not be paying up for. I am talking about the rental property you purchase, to collect rent, or even flip.

Second thing I want to clear up, I am giving general statements and rough numbers in this blog series. With any investment there is always another side, another stat, another point of view. I get that. This is what makes markets if we all thought the same way no one would buy or sell anything. This is just one man’s view. I hope you can share you view points in the comments below. READ MORE….

Everyone thinks being a landlord is all fun and games. You sit back each month and just let the money roll in. I have even talked to some landlords that complain about what a pain it is taking all their rent money to the bank each month. Don’t get me wrong, being a land lord can be a very rewarding job, part time or full time, but this week has been particularly hard for me as a landlord. Which reminds me there are times that this job is not very rewarding both emotionally and financially.

Apple, I want to love you, I really do. I’ve even put up with your high prices because your designs are sleek, your user interfaces are nice on the eyes, and you’ve been on the front-lines of technology advancement on the behalf of users. At least, you were.