joe menn: how long have you been at this and in how many markets?homas: about 12 years and today we're in 30 states. scott: this seems like such an obvious thing. i'm surprised i hadn't heard of it before. thomas: it's very obvious and, really, at the end of the day, this--the housing market and the financing of a house should have been this way from the beginning because when you buy your first house we all know the pain of buying the first house when we're putting all our hard-earned cash into one investment. it would be a lot better if we had some diversification and then you can actually get some help buying the house and maybe keep some cash for a rainy day on the side so, going back to co-investing, i would say it really is the way housing should have been from the beginning and, as you pointed out, it has been like this for a long time but it was just done by your parents or your rich uncle. and our goal is really to democratize the rich uncle so that everybody can afford to buy a house but in balance with their income or their life goals, ra

our reporters, erin griffith of "the new york times" and reuters' joe menn, this week on "press:here.d morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. i got one of those letters in the mail the other day. you know the kind, the ones that say "open immediately" and "for addressee only," sure signs there's gonna be a fake check inside. and sure enough, there's the check: $218,000 made out to me.