The Real Estate Bloggers

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• You Can Buy A Home With Bitcoins
• Wells Fargo 591 Million Mortgage Settlement With Fannie Mae
• Why Young People Can Not Afford To Buy A Home

You Can Buy A Home With Bitcoins Posted: 06 Jan 2014 08:25 AM PST If you have followed the growing market in BitCoins, you know that they are slowly being accepted for many traditional transactions. But the New York City brokerage, Bond New York, has announced they are accepting bitcoins for their real estate sales. Bond New York, a Manhattan-based real estate broker, has started accepting the digital currency for real estate transactions, The Post has learned. Bond New York believes it is the first real estate brokerage firm to accept bitcoin. "Real estate brokerage is a service industry," said Noah Freedman, a co-founder of Bond New York. "Our job is to make real estate transactions easy for our customers. Bitcoins are just another mechanism to help people facilitate transactions." Several larger real estate brokers are not sold on the idea and have no plans to set up bitcoin accounts any time soon. via The New York Post Now there are pros and cons to this. The BitCoin currency is new, governments can not stand the threat they offier, and most people have not heard about them. But there is a huge market developing for this digital currency. For Manhattan real estate the idea works as the city is full of people on the cutting edge. And Noah Freedman making the announcement that Bond New York would be accepting BitCoins is one heck of a way to get publicity in front of a very tech savvy audience. The very clients they are looking to develop a relationship with. Just don’t leave the bitcoins in escrow for too long. It is a very volatile currency.

Wells Fargo 591 Million Mortgage Settlement With Fannie Mae Posted: 06 Jan 2014 08:06 AM PST Wells Fargo has cleaned the decks with a 591 million dollar settlement with Fannie Mae after saddling the now government lending institution with billions of dollars in bad loans. This follows Wells Fargo settlement of $869 million dollars with Freddie Mac earlier this year. Fannie Mae and its sibling firm, Freddie Mac, were seized by the federal government in 2008 as they teetered near bankruptcy because of bad loans they had purchased from banks. The firms bundled the mortgages into securities and could try to force banks to buy back loans that did not meet certain guidelines. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been aggressively pushing banks to repurchase so-called legacy loans the firms had bought before they were placed under government conservatorship. "This agreement represents a fitting conclusion to our year of hard work to put legacy issues in the rear-view mirror and begin 2014 focused on improving the future of housing finance." said Fannie Chief Executive Timothy J. Mayopoulos. via the LA Times The end of the liar loan era is just about over, and everyone has won except for the middle class. Nobody went to jail, few got fired, the government just printed some more money, and now the problem has all gone away for those who are connected. For the rest of us, the carnage continues…

Why Young People Can Not Afford To Buy A Home Posted: 06 Jan 2014 07:36 AM PST The real estate industry is in a war, and they do not even realize it. The major combatants are the real estate industry, the educational establishment, and the automotive industry. The war is being fought over the young people’s debt. Because unlike the government, the individual can only borrow so many dollars. Now the bad news for those in the real estate industry, you are losing. Big time! Why, because banks learned that a homes collateral is no where near as secure as a student loan. A mortgage used to be the gold plated loan, with values fairly secure, and large down payments protecting the lender. But then came the federal government with their guaranteed loan program for students. These used to be risky loans for banks to offer as it was dependent on the future prospects of the borrower. Now they are the gold plated loan. Why, because they are not dischargable in bankruptcy. They will follow you until you die. And this is a bankers dream. They will lend crazy money for you to get your philosophy degree, and even lower your payments when you are working as a barista, but they will never discharge the debt. And when your career starts to turn the corner, you find your dream spouse, and it is time for the white picket fence, you are in for a shock. You are carrying so much student debt that the entry level homes are beyond your ability to buy. Banks will look at your debt ratio and smile sweetly as they tell you that they can not help you. And smile they will, because they do not really care if you buy a home, they just want to have you paying them interest. And you are already doing so… Later on, we will do a post on how to get out of the trap, or even better, never get into it in the first place. Until then, pay down your student loans as fast as you can if you want to be a homeowner in the future. Keep eating Ramen and drinking box wine or cheap beer. But get out of debt ASAP!

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