Patent ID: 7698214

Claim:
A method of trading individual, closed residential mortgage loans in an open-market forum, without loans being presented in a structured pool, comprising: authorizing, through the use of a computer, a file associated with an individual, closed residential mortgage loan to be made available by a seller to a plurality of potential buyers for the opportunity to perform simultaneous, and real time, due diligence and bidding; converting substantially all loan documents associated with the loan in the file into electronic file documents for submittal to the plurality of potential buyers, wherein the loan documents comprise information that allows each of the plurality of buyers to perform simultaneous due diligence in real time for the purpose of placing a bid on the loan prior to a purchase of the loan and to assess the risk and value of the loan; making the electronic file documents simultaneously available in real time to the plurality of potential buyers for review, due diligence, and purchase without pooling or averaging the electronic file data prior to making it available to the plurality of potential buyers, thereby making the risk of the individual, closed mortgage loan transparent to the plurality of potential buyers; receiving a bid from one or more of the potential buyers on the individual, closed residential mortgage loan, wherein the bid is a winning bid that represents a binding agreement to buy the individual, closed residential mortgage loan if the bid is the first bid that matches the seller's offer or is a bid that is otherwise accepted by the seller; accepting the bid as the winning bid and electronically forwarding a note associated with the file to a clearing agency for delivery to the potential buyer; receiving funds from the clearing agency into a seller account as payment for the individual, closed residential mortgage loan.