Author: Amir Ness
If you have ever applied for a mortgage loan, you’ll probably cringe at the thought of ever having to do it again. Regardless of how good your broker or backer was, mortgages are a pain. We can blame the bankers of 2008 for that, and all the fancy and absurd loans they conjured up; loans that were destined to fail and fail they did. The problem is, now it’s almost impossible to get a mortgage. There are so many capable borrowers but because banks have become so gun shy from the events of the past, they don’t trust even the borrowers they should. Moreover, when you do get a loan, you can expect the loan package to be about 400 pages, all filled with disclosures you’ve never heard of and won’t ever read, and a bunch of other paperwork that will get filed away in some storage never to be re-called.
In 2008, the worst happened, millions of loans had to be recalled, and guess what, because of securitization, which I will soon explain, it was almost impossible to find out who the true owner of the loan is. Owner of the loan? Yes. You see, securitization is a fancy word for something Wall St. created to bundle up thousands of loans and sell them in pieces. What happened was many loans would get grouped together, then the rating agency would loan at the ‘tape’ which was basically a spreadsheet with all the individual loans inside, and voila the rating agency would say this is a grade A security. Meaning the loans inside this bundle are all A borrowers. Now the problem, to begin with, was that they weren’t, there were lots of bad apples in there. More than that, there were securities created for B and C loans, those were the “toxic” kind. By securitizing these bundles, Wall St. was able to sell them off to insurance companies and institutional investors, and make a lot of commissions in between. The problem was, those institutional buyers were not looking for risky investments, they wanted a safe and steady return on their money. Not only did they not get that, when the mortgage crisis hit and they had to contact the borrowers of the loans, it was a big mess. In many instances, the paperwork was locked away somewhere and took months to get a hold of, when they did get a hold of the files, they saw lots of mistakes and even fraud.
So what’s going on here? Well, the mortgage industry was taken down by greed. Because of the outdated and manual aspects of how records were kept, the industry all but collapsed. So with that, here we are today with the advent of the blockchain. We can call the blockchain a giant record keeping system with the ability to ‘re-call’ any contract or document with 100% accuracy. If only the blockchain was being used before the collapse of 2008, things would be much different today. Lenders would have immediate access to borrowers loans, and loan applications could be much more efficiently handled.
Enter Block66, a mortgage blockchain headed by a former recognized mortgage professional and serial entrepreneur, Joe Markham. Joe is not new to the start up space, with successful launches in industries such as mobile apps, and software. With that background, it made him the perfect candidate to take his experience and start a blockchain that would revolutionize the mortgage industry, and bring a much needed change. All is not done by one man alone of course, if you look at the Block66 team, you will see depth of experience and know-how. In evaluating any ICO, you want to make sure that it’s the team that stands out, not just any one person, and with Block66, you have just that.
Taking a look at the rest of the Block66 team (block66.io) you will see many seasoned entrepreneurs, tech specialists, and a clear roadmap for their MVP. Before getting into that, it’s important to know that with the many ICO’s that are out their, they don’t need a blockchain. In other words, the ICO industry has gotten so famous, people just slap the name ICO onto anything to raise piles of money. Well, block66 is not doing that. Block66 is in an industry that needs the blockchain to solve it’s problems. Remember, the blockchain is a giant distributed ledger with the power to immutably retain records and recall them at the touch of a button. SO remember the problem with the mortgage crisis where loans were basically lost and institutional investors couldn’t even figure out what they owned? Problem solved. Putting mortgages on the blockchain allows lenders to easily and accurately file loans on the blockchain and never worry about fraud or lost paperwork. But it doesn’t end there.
Another serious problem block66 solves is the fact that today, loans are not even available to a great number of people who can afford them. What do I mean? Well, today there are many people earning an income as “freelancers”, I like to thing of them as individual entrepreneurs, people who have taken their talents and gone out to find their own book of clients. Globalization and the internet have made it much easier to do that, and block66 understands that- many banks don’t. So what block66 is doing is creating a whole new way to analyze credit. Today, someone who works for themselves and earns $10,000 a month from various clients still may not get approved for a loan. Crazy isn’t it. Because of the past, many people who should be getting loans aren’t. But with block66’s new way of analyzing credit, those people will now be able to get a loan- and a lot easier than the traditional banks would have it. With block66, they are making loans available for today’s borrowers, they understand the new economy much better than the banks.
Lastly, those institutional investors who were buying mortgage loans as investments, will now be able to clearly see what they are buying. That means that these institutions are highly likely to become block66 customers and buy mortgages from them. So block66 is set to become the new loan originators of the blockchain era. They will provide more transparency than before, they will provide more security for all parties involved, and most of all, they will make the dream of home ownership a reality for millions of people who deserve to own their own home.
Visit block66 and get in touch with them here to learn more, www.block66.io
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