This blog entry first appeared at InvestorsAlly.com blog site on November 1st, 2010.
During InvestorsAlly’s pre-launch period we have received tremendous inquiries. However, as sort of expected, most of the applications have been from Aspiring Home Owners (AHO) rather than from Joint Property Investors (JPI). The ratio is more than 10 to 1.
As could be understood, that even if you run a business like match.com or eHarmony.com there are doomed to be some disappointed or disgruntled customers. Ugly girls and geeky men who have enthusiastically signed up at these dating sites hoping to get married in a month may be doomed to be disappointed. While the Internet technology service provides is a new additional venue and method for them to meet and to increase their chances of getting married, it does not guarantee any successful results.
Similar to the dating service, investors usually have the power to pick and choose the best properties with the most responsible, reliable and enthusiastic home owners to work with in a FARJHO deal. Home owners who want to have the investors’ interest in joining hands with them to help them purchase homes may need to try hard to woo these investors perhaps similar to how some men may have more motivation to hone their skills in pursuing the dream girls of their choice. No pains no gains.
Having said that, what our management would like to see less is that a few elite home owners with great properties get to lure and grab most investor’s attention. We will try hard to make it more evenly spread so that all home owners may get an equal chance but then again, the FARJHO service by design is totally based on free market principles. The free market forces will reign in the end. Management intervention may not be a good thing after all.
Anyone who has been to the Central Coast of California to stop by the state park at the beach near San Simeon to see the elephant seals will remember that a few dominant male seals usually get to breed many female seals alone in a colony. There are hundreds more other rejected male seals could not participate and only got to hang out together with other rejected male seals in a separate area along the beach. This is definitely not what we would like to see happen to the Aspiring Home Owners who are interested in the FARJHO business at InvestorsAlly.
What we prefer to see is more like the emperor penguin’s rookeries where male penguins like AHOs faithfully mate with a few selected female penguins like JPIs and perform the incubation duty where females go out to hunt for food. It is really what the FARJHO mating service was designed to achieve.
This problem could be a tentative growing pain for FARJHO since the capital availability from JPIs is currently quite limited from the tremendous demand generated from AHOs during the pre-launch test market period. As both the domestic financial institutions, pension funds, endowments and government agencies in the US as well as foreign investors get to participate in the near future in a significant way, the problem may get to correct itself. Let’s hope it would indeed be the case.
FARJHO 