Thanks Anthony for the mention. It’s an interesting twist of fate that it was your book on mass collaboration using the Web that first made us think that the Web maybe the solution to enable buying and selling homes through shares to dramatically reduce the high cost and burden that homeownership poses.

Just today we’ve written up a new one page description on our main wiki page on how we see this can be made possible. And we’re inviting all to join in researching and exploring the issues and help draw up model proposals and contracts to solve this problem which affect us all.

On a side note, web-based pricing, as you pointed out, has its hazards, and for pricing real estate we’ll need sophisticated tools. But we think it’ll change the way we price many things,– it’ll align our asset prices closer with what we increasingly value more. So maybe a green suburb will be finally priced more than a congested midtown, and one day Vince the street artist’s art may fetch almost as much as Vincent van Gogh’s.

As an investor, I’d be very cautious buying 49% of a person’s home that was on the verge of foreclosure. If they had trouble paying the mortgage thus far, it’s not entirely unlikely that they will have trouble in future too. Should the bank ever force the issue, I doubt I’d get anything for my 49% share.

The coolest product for sale would have to be this:

“Made with secret metals and materials, this cellphone looks like a thin piece of shiny metal, completely blank, and can do whatever you want it to do. Used by superheroes and super-villains all over, it works everywhere in the universe at all times.”

Lot’s of fun, still not hugely attractive as an investment.