My feud with “Section 8 Karim”, Fannie & Freddie privatization, & how crypto is infecting TradFi
Greetings, investors! Welcome to my new-and-improved newsletter for rental property investors, which aims to be shorter (a bit), punchier and more focused (I hope), and more frequent (we’ll see).
Please let me know what you think by replying to this email — I welcome your suggestions and input. Thanks for reading!
My feud with “Section 8 Karim”
I wrote an article last year examining the outsized claims of “Section 8 Karim”, a 22-year-old real estate influencer who wants to teach you how to make huge returns with his Section 8 program. TLDR: I wasn’t buying what he was selling.
When traffic to that article suddenly plunged to zero last summer, I knew something was up. But I couldn’t imagine that the saga would still be going on now — and if anything, it’s intensifying.
Here’s the story: Karim (and/or those who share his goal of getting my article taken) down have been on a year-long crusade to make sure nobody ever reads it. They have filed 18 bogus copyright claims against it, threatened to sue me for defamation, and lied to Google about the content being “outdated” to get it removed from search results.
In other words, they are attempting to censor me any way they can — with threats, fraudulent copyright claims, and underhanded tactics.
What do you do when someone is trying to silence you? You talk LOUDER.
So that’s exactly what I did: I just published a new article detailing all the ways this article has been attacked. I brought ALL the receipts — and I absolutely promise that it’s a riveting tale that will surprise and shock you.
Why? Well, the last year has provided an eye-opening, and I must say disheartening, education in the way the internet really works. We tend to think of it is a free and open marketplace of ideas, stories, and businesses, competing on a level playing field for attention and/or dollars. Once you understand the story of Karim’s attacks on my content, it will forever shatter this myth in your mind.
Real Estate News & Data
Home Prices
A pulse check on the broader residential real estate market shows that 2025 has been a slow year so far. Much ink was spilled recently on the fact that sellers now outnumber buyers in the marketplace, and as a result of this and elevated mortgage rates, home prices continue to stagnate.
In fact, they’re falling in some places: you can check out the 141 Markets where prices are falling.
Also: definitely check out ResiClub’s SFR Investor Survery results. Lots of great data and charts there on what investors are seeing with home sales, insurance, rent increases, and more.
Fannie & Freddie going private?
Elsewhere, a BIG story has been brewing in real estate: the potential re-privatization of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac. Quick primer: the sibling mortgage giants went into federal conservatorship during the 2008 crash. While this wasn’t meant to be permanent, it has worked pretty well to stabilize and de-risk the mortgage market.
The Trump administration has been hinting about ending the conservatorship and taking Fannie & Freddie private. What would this mean for mortages? Well…it’s complicated, and not everyone agrees. Some are concerned that this would cause upward pressure on mortgage rates; in fact, this concern may have derailed similar efforts in the first Trump administration.
One thing is for sure, though: a number of prominent investors, notably hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, will profit handsomely if the entities go private. That’s because they still have significant shares of the companies, which are expected to spike if the conservatorship ends. Not surprisingly, those investors, including Ackman, have made strong public arguments in favor of the change.
The Latest in My Portfolio
I’ve updated my portfolio tracking figures through the end of May. It’s been a tough year so far, but things finally appear to be stabilizing. I need a few quiet months to make up some ground!
And now this!
This month’s Roundup is sponsored by Stessa.
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Well, That’s Interesting…
Crypto is, remarkably, still a thing
Cryptocurrency has long been a topic of fascination for me, mostly because it seems to serve no economic purpose other than to enrich a growing army of “crypto bros” — which now, in a sad but entirely unsurprising turn, includes the President himself, who launched his own $Trump meme coin and then auctioned off an exclusive dinner to the top 200 coin holders. (Grifters gonna grift, I guess.)
So on one side we have “serious” crypto people telling us (after 17 years!) that this is STILL the future of commerce, currency, and the entire financial system. And on the other side, you have the President correctly identifying and demonstrating the REAL purpose of crypto by running a nakedly corrupt pump-and-dump scheme out of the White House.
I’m honestly just amazed this is still a thing.
And yet it is. In fact, the crypto industry may finally be getting what it has long wanted: federal legislation that would legitimize the industry by providing clarity on regulatory frameworks and controls (and probably create some favorable loopholes for crypto backers at the same time.) This bill, called the CLARITY act, is currently making its way through Congress.
Crypto vs. TradFi gets blurry
Crypto exchange Kraken has just released Krak, a payments app meant to compete with Venmo, Zelle, and Paypal. It allows users to send funds (cryptocurrency OR regular currency) anywhere in the world at very low cost — which, if you’ve ever dealt with the cross-border limitations of Venmo and Zelle, or the cross-border fees of PayPal, you know is kind of a big deal.
In other words, a crypto firm just created a payment app that might be broadly useful, even for people who have no interest in crypto at all. The lines are blurring.
Legacy companies are also moving towards crypto. Many are looking to create their own stablecoins, including banks (Chase) and big retailers (Walmart and Amazon). But in another strange twist, a growing list of public companies have decided that the best thing they can do with their free cash is to — wait for it — buy Bitcoin.
The undisputed champion of Bitcoin-buying is a company called Microstrategy, which kinda sorta used to be a software company. Now, it’s a Bitcoin holding company with a software side hustle: the company’s hoard of Bitcoin is currently valued at over $63 billion, and they just bought more. But they’re not alone: check out this tracker of all the companies who are buying and holding Bitcoin. There are many.
Cash serves a purpose on a company’s balance sheet that crypto doesn’t, due to its volatility. So why would a company want to use its cash to buy Bitcoin, rather than, say, reinvesting that money into their business or returning it to shareholders as dividends? Maybe because they think it will cause their stock price to spike. (Thanks, extremely online traders of crypto and meme stocks! The king of all meme stocks, GameStop, owns more crypto than all but 13 other companies, so there is some overlap here.) Microstrategy started buying Bitcoin in August 2020, when their stock price was $14. Today, it’s $397, and that increase has nothing to do with their software business. Seems like other companies want some of that candy, too.
In essence, this represents the pump-and-dump meme stock/meme coin scheme, which Donald Trump reminded us is truly the beating heart of crypto, infecting public companies’ investment strategies. Which…doesn’t sound great.
Finally: in the latest sign the apocalypse is upon us, Polymarket has partnered with X to facilitate crypto-gambling on…anything. Just what our young men need.
More interesting stuff:
Schools can now pay college athletes directly. College athletics has less and less to do with college these days. When a college softball player can earn $1m per year, is she a college student or a professional athlete? I have no idea.
Reddit sues Anthropic in latest legal battle over AI training data. As AI companies run out of training data, the legal battleground over the use of content is heating up.
The news source America trusts most is…The Weather Channel. Sounds about right.
Waymo costs more than Uber or Lyft…for now. If you don’t live in Phoenix, SF, LA, or Austin, you might not realize that Waymo is completing over 250,000 paid taxi rides each week in their fully autonomous vehicles. Consumer trust is an obstacle for them, but less discussed is whether they can eventually get their costs below services with human drivers.
Katie Gatti Tassin’s love/hate letter to personal finance resonated with me. She also wrote this incredible essay exploring the dissonant feeling of watching the world burn from a comfortable perch. She is officially my favorite finance writer, and I’m basically obsessed with her.
Eye candy: what if birds left tracks in the sky? This is just so cool and so beautiful.
About the Author
Hi, I’m Eric! I used cash-flowing rental properties to leave my corporate career at age 39. I started Rental Income Advisors in 2020 to help other people achieve their own goals through real estate investing.
My blog focuses on learning & education for new investors, and I make numerous tools & resources available for free, including my industry-leading Rental Property Analyzer.
I also now serve as a coach to dozens of private clients starting their own journeys investing in rental properties, and have helped my clients buy millions of dollars (and counting) in real estate. To chat with me about coaching, schedule a free initial consultation.
Free Rental Property Analyzer
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