Death by a Thousand Paper-cuts: The Mortgage Industry is a Retarded Dinosaur
So my wife and I recently closed on a house. We're excited, everything is bright-shiny-happy.
The point of this post isn't to talk about our new home. Its to discuss the sheer absurdity of the process of buying a home.
We literally (a word I hate using, but felt it was warranted in this case) signed and initialed over 80 different documents.
I only had a slight idea of what any of them said. Much of it was legalese explaining what was allowed and what was not allowed by ourselves, third parties, wild animals, circus clowns, etc.
Signing and initialing... paper... after... paper... for... over... an... hour.
I suppose this is the cost of a real estate system that theoretically functions properly with minimal disputes over who owns the land. I won't even discuss the property tax system... ugh.
Anyway, the whole time I was sitting in this 10th story office room overlooking our fair city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, I couldn't help but think of the contrast between smart contract potential and the "old" way of doing things.
I look forward to the day where a home could be find, sold, and closed within a matter of hours or days based on an established communication protocol between a number of requisite parties necessary to sign a transaction verifying that their role in the deal has been completed, confirmed, and proper within the regulations of the law....
All while paying the parties involved directly and immediately for their work.
Instead we're still handing out cashiers checks signed by banks who are only going to package our new mortgage and sell it to another larger bank that receives infinite amount of fiat to do just that -- buy assets and their derivatives.
Soooo.... smart contracts, when?
I don't think we signed more than some 3-4 papers when buying a house and taking up mortage on it here in Norway. It's the contract between the seller and buyer, the official ownership transferal document (to be signed by the seller and two witnesses, not by the buyer), we had to sign some papers to become customers of the bank giving us the loan, we had to sign the loan agreement contract with the bank, and then the official mortage paper confirming that the bank would own our property if we mishold the loan agreement. Not that bad, and house ownership through mortages are heavily subsidized in this country, so it has been a very good deal for us. We rent out part of the house, the house rent income is bigger than the interests we pay on the loan, we don't pay taxes on the rent income, and we get a tax break on the interests we pay.
The whole process can indeed be done without any physical signatures at all, by using a government-sanctioned de-facto national e-signature system fully owned and controlled by one commercial entity ("BankID"), and with any bank in this country having the power to order such BankIDs on the behalf of their customers. I find it extremely scary.
We are getting closer to that day.
A month or two ago, in North Carolina, the first paperless mortgage took place. The idea of using all that paper in 2017 is totally absurd. I foresee that by the end of 2018, the idea of paper mortgages will be passe. The banks can process things a lot quicker and cheaper without paper.
Blockchain might take a while longer but that will hit, my guess, 2020.
Thank you for sharing your experience and the absurdity of it all.
Oo heard wark we finish this wark for fill beater
i will always support you man!!!
If you really dive behind the scenes with mortgages you will discover that they are typically based entirely on fraud and provably so. Without going into the gory details - it is generally true that there is no money being 'lent' and in fact the money is created by the process of signing the agreement. This is only really possible because of the total corruption of the 'authorities' who are intended to have oversight of it all, plus the generally naivety of the public who trust that such a giant scam could never be pulled off.. but it has been.
I have made a few posts on this topic and can link to them if anyone wants to know more.
Btw, I found you because I am investing a lot here in the form of technical knowledge, time, creativity and tech hardware as I am now a witness for Steem and I noticed that you are voting for @steve-walschot - but that steve-walschot 's witness server is offline and of no use to Steem (for quite a long time as far as I can tell).
I would really appreciate if you would support me with a vote to give me a chance to show what I can do for Steem and Steemit. I have a long background in software engineering and also in running social networks.
My witness application post is here.
Cheers!
Congrats on your new home! The paperwork can seem crazy but hopefully it will be worth it in the long run. Enjoy!