Spicer Matthews

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.

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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.

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Something that has been frustrating me more than anything in the last year. With the slower economy I have been able to spend more time just talking to people; strangers, family, friends, and just about anyone else that has something to say. Being a business person the conversation often heads down the path of success and how to achieve it, but so many people I talk to don’t want it bad enough. They would rather talk about it then do it. I am not just talking about building a business. I am talking about getting a job if they are unemployed, upgrading your current job, or starting a business.

When the economy tanked in 2008 I more or less lost my job. Every project I was working on dried up and went away. I like 10% of America right now I did not have the ability to collect unemployment, so I had to make a big shift in how I as going to support my self almost over night. Luckily, I was ready and the shift was something I was able to make quickly. I will get to what helped me in my shift in a second, but first a little rant. I have talked to so many people that are on unemployment and they are doing nothing with their lives. They talk about how they want to use this time to better themselves. They talk about the businesses they are going to build during this time. They talk about the personal brand building they are going to do to help them upgrade their employment when they go back to work, but they spend a great deal of time sitting on their ass playing video games or something.

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Every geek blog I actively read posted a list of top technologies for 2009, so I thought I would be remissed if I did not do the same. These are technologies that really stepped it up or came to my attention in 2009 and became part of my everyday life both for work and personal used.

2009 was all about moving my life to the cloud. I determined early in 2009 it was stupid to ever store a file on my computer ever again. All my data should live in the cloud so I can have access to it everywhere I go, I can have access on any platform (think cell phone), I can easily share my data with people I want to share it with, and lastly I do not have to worry about backups (for the most part), and that is just what I have done.
Below is a list of my top 10 products that have changed my life in 2009. The first 6 are sort of consumer related and the last 4 are software developer related. So if you are not a software developer I am thinking you might only find the first 6 interesting.

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So I continue to not be sure if I am in Gary Vaynerchuk’s camp or not yet. He is too new. Will he be a voice and a business leader in 2020? I don’t know. I sure hope so. The problem and the the driving force of Gary is the first thing everyone says is wow that guy is a “Dush-Bag”. Yeah he comes on strong. Yeah he has a bit of a know-it-all fashion to him. I feel the same way about Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, and Donald Trump. Would you call anyone of those guys Dush-Bags now? All those guys have built empires. Gary has a long ways to go before he will be next to those guys, but the things he is very much like those guys. He gets it!!! He sees how the marketing world is changing. He see the power of sell branding. He also understands hard work. If you believe in him or not right now it does not matter, but if you do not realize this guy has a amazing view of business and one route you can travel with it your a fool. Until I get to meet Gary, or until I can public trade his stock (that is when the truth comes out), I will continue to keep my Dush-Bag flag radar on, but will truly admire him as a business person.

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I have to admin, I am a CEO stalker. Not in the creepy sit outside their house kinda of way. However, I must admin I did drive by Warren Buffet’s office and house a few time. When I say I am a stalker I am more of an admirer. I am someone that loves getting inside the mind of a great CEO (or CEO type person). I read as much as I can about them, I watch all the interviews, I track the performance of their companies and more

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I just watched a great interview of Gary Vaynerchuk by Rick Turoczy (@turoczy) at his blog Silicon Florist. I watch Gary a bunch on the internet but unlike many things I see seek out I have never drank the Gary Vaynerchuk Kool Aid. Often when I find a blog or some great site I get all hyped up on it and visit the site everyday. I have always been a random passer by’er of http://tv.winelibrary.com so I never really understood why everyone was getting all jazzed on his new book CurshIt.

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I have written many different blogs and these blogs have been all over the place. I have the stock blog, the geek blog, the business blog. It has become confusing to say the lease. I love business, I love technology, I love finance. Everyday, I am obsessed with a different things. Why hide my randomness in different blogs. So as of today I am merging all my personal blogs into one blog. This one!! I will try to be organized in my categories so if you could careless about one of my topics you can filter it out.

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