First Day of School!

Wow...it has been YEARS since I've had that statement personally apply to me! I told my daughter, mommy's going back to school can you believe it?! Then I remembered my 7 year old is just like me. She is not fond of school...ok she is more social than I was back then (but then try to go to class and you don't speak a lick of english and everyone makes fun of you, of course it makes perfect sense that I had to schedule a few fights after school and beat up some of those boys until they learned to respect an immigrant Romanian girl, but I digress)...

So, I'm glad she has her friends, and she really does enjoy school but she is not fond of waking up in the morning. However, once she is in school she is in full swing - let's hope that lasts for a while! Speaking of which...

Let's just say I subscribe to the school of life theory. Learning more through experience than in a classroom. Don't get me wrong, you have to educate yourself. To date, I have read over 20,000 books, fiction and non-fiction in every genre imaginable - it's amazing what you can learn on your own when you put your mind to it. However, school that is concentrated on the topic I want to learn about and filters out all the rest of the fluff - that, I am definitely up for.

So I started classes yesterday at the New York Real Estate Institue and I am very psyched! The teacher a Mr. J Watson, also known as the Long Island Realtor, loves what he does, knows what he does and furthermore, knows how to teach it! You have to understand, back to my aversion to math, I did not speak any "finance lingo" before this class... Fannie Mae could have been someone's aunt for all I knew. (Ok Ok I live in the real world and realized it HAD to be something investor related but what exactly it was and how it affected my world, that I did not bother to really look into). I can only imagine the face of any person with even a little bit of financial background reading this blog...

But it gets better, I spoke to someone that has been working for a bank for years now...and I asked him, "Do you know what Fannie Mae , Ginnie Mae and Freddie Mac are?
"Sure" he said, "they give you mortgages right?"
"They buy the mortgage from the bank that gave you the mortgage" I told him with my new found knowledge just waiting to spill out of every pore of my body!
"Huh, that's interesting I did not know that!" he answered me.
"Oh, and did you know that you don't get a mortgage from the bank, you give the bank the mortgage and they give you the money to buy the house, many people don't know that is the politically correct way of putting it", I could not resist to add that and other pearls of wisdom to the mix.
"Wow, and you learned all this in one day?" he remarked sounding amazed.

Ooops I almost forgot the underlined part of the lesson as per Mr.Watson "I am going to teach you things your own real estate colleagues and brokers may not know...but don't tell them...don't try and correct them if they say otherwise...just remember what I tell you".

I have to give credit where credit is due...Mr. Watson you rock! And I am on a roll!

P.S. Yes, The Mystery House story is still pending I am waiting for the photos before I post that...it's a good one waiting to be told...