I’m joined by my fellow co-host, the always energetic, Chris Seveney. How are you, Chris? 

I’m good.  

How is it going? 

Not too bad. How about you? 

I’m pretty good. 

I had a rant-filled week, for people who are on the Facebook group, based on several different things I’ve been dealing with. If you haven’t read the other episodes, one of the things that people who know me is I sometimes say whatever is on my mind. Sometimes to my detriment, sometimes to my benefit. I’m not shy to say what’s on my mind. I’ve been doing a lot of rants. Our trials and tribulations aren’t going to be one of those. How’s your week been? 

It’s been busy. I got a lot going on trying to grow the business. It’s been good. I’m closing on a note. It’s a one-off seller finance deal. It’s what I was going to talk about as far as my trial and tribulation. This has been in the works for quite some time. It’s pretty drawn out. I’m supposed to wire the funds. We’ll see if that happens. In the process of due diligence on this asset in Alabama, I had ordered a BPO. The equity probably wasn’t a concern here but still, you want to check the boxes and do the due diligence that’s appropriate. 

I ordered a BPO through Dickie Baldwin and apparently, the entire realtor’s office got COVID. He had to shift gears and go to another agent. It kept getting delayed. Fortunately, the purchase was getting delayed for other reasons as well. I wasn’t in a huge hurry for the BPO. Eventually, I said, “Forget it.” My understanding with Dickie was I’m not going to worry about it. Maybe we can get some pictures and that’s fine. Do you know where this is going? 

One of the hardest things in the note investing industry is getting good pictures of the property. Click To Tweet

Yes, I do because I think you’ve forwarded to me something about this. 

I have the email pulled up to remind myself. The issue was closed. Dickie didn’t owe me anything at that point but he’s very thorough. He kept pressing to get some property condition report or something for me. This property is out there. Google doesn’t necessarily pull up the right address. It’s pretty rural. There are some challenges with regard to that as well. Out of the blue, Dickie emails me and says, “I finally got something. Here it is. I paid this realtor $35 already.” He was all excited. 

He sends me the Google image of the wrong property because that’s what comes up on Google Street View. It’s the image that I had sent him two weeks prior. All it said was one sentence from the realtor. It’s far back off the road. I couldn’t get better pictures. That was $35. I sent an email back to Dickie and I said, “It’s not your fault but this is the same picture from Google Street View.” I’ve sent it back to him and said, “It’s the same picture, same shadows and the same branches are in the same place. It is the same picture. It’s the wrong property.” I said, “There’s no value–add. I’m sorry.” This realtor got all fired up. I would never pull a Google picture and send it over to you. 

He got all upset with Dickie and said, “Dickie, never use me again. Take me off your list. This is ridiculous that I’m getting accused of something like this. This is a terrible area. I was there at the end of the driveway but couldn’t get any closer due to the family in the property,” or something like that. I felt bad for Dickie. He was trying his best. At the end of the day, it’s like, “I cannot believe this is what this realtor tried to pass along as quality work.” That’s where that stands. 

Three things popped into my head during that. One is we should do an episode on challenges buying real properties. 

It’s a good topic. 

Two is I like to drink a lot of coffee. Why don’t we have any merchandise with the Good Deeds on it? That’s my random thought. Jamie is like, “He probably wasn’t even listening to me.” The third is this is one of the challenges. I don’t want to go on a full-blown rant on this because I did already on Facebook. Anybody who’s a middleman still has some responsibility. If they’re passing through the cost, that’s one thing. If they’re making money off of it, they have some duty and obligation to check on the product they’re providing because, at the end of the day, it’s coming from them. You’re buying the products from them. 

I love Dickie of Baldwin Advisory Group. This is not a knock by any means against them. I want to be clear. I have this happen all the time with brokers selling assets who will pop over an asset and not know anything about it, “I’m brokering it. Give me 3%.” They haven’t done anything. They don’t know anything. They don’t know the servicer. I’ve had it happen with other people as well. It’s just not brokers but it’s similar to people who are middlemen who think they’re passers. You’re running a business and there are certain things you should check like, “Here’s a Google Street View as an example. Make sure it doesn’t match.” I’ve had this happen with a preservation company. The same thing. They send somebody out to take pictures. They took a picture of the ground and took a bunch of pictures of “the area.” One shot of the house was at Google Street View. What’s funnier on this one is in the top corner, it still said, “Google.” 

In previous cases, Dickie has gotten good pictures for me. I know you weren’t ripping on his services. He has provided a lot of value, previously. In this case, he came up short. I feel like, “Dickie, you shouldn’t be working with this guy. Cross him off your list.” It’s crazy to me. You hear there are lazy realtors or unethical realtors. I can’t believe somebody would take money from him, even if it’s only $35. 

I’ll be honest, one of the hardest things in this industry is getting good pictures of the property whether you’re getting it from a BPO or a preservation company. That is probably one of my pet peeves. The reason why is a lot of these companies is paying people $5 or $10 to go take these photos. They don’t give a crap. That’s probably a problem. I had a property that caught fire. It was a contract for deed. We’re closing on the borrower. The borrower was fighting tooth and nail trying to save the property. They would call the servicer trying to make a payment. We weren’t allowing them to make one payment because we wanted full reinstatement. They were maybe 30, 40 months behind. 

 

They continually threatened to sue us because we wouldn’t take their money. They had been served. They complained to the court. They hadn’t been served. The court asked them if they wanted hearings. It’s like, “Is this your signature? Did you get this?” They said, “Yes, but we didn’t look at it.” That was one of their defenses. I don’t make assumptions about things. I try not to, anyway. They did have an eviction date. This is in one of my rants where the night before, the sheriff canceled the eviction. It got rescheduled and it’s still hadn’t been rescheduled. When they were supposed to get evicted to a certain date and time, somehow, the property caught fire. 

It magically caught fire. 

This is interesting. I had another fire where the borrowers looked like they may have been doing some illegal activities with substances. I shouldn’t assume but it’s based on what you read about them and their criminal history. They weren’t paying. They got foreclosed upon. They moved out and they put a trailer on the lot next door. This house that I had got torched. The next day, their trailer got torched. 

It’s a crazy coincidence. 

Probably, somebody wasn’t happy with them. Thankfully, I don’t think there are any bodies found. 

Where does that stand now? 

That’s what I was going to get to next. Instead of me saying it burned down where it is, I had to go full circle. It’s my twenty-minute stories. Jamie’s like, “Can this guy get through with this already?” What happens is I had force-placed insurance through U.S. Risks/J.B. Lloyd. It’s under their policy. Once it happened, I reached out to my representative there and said, “FYI, here are the photos from the preservation company. I had somebody out there in October. Here are some photos from October to show.” I said, “I don’t know the loss state. I haven’t found that out yet but here are prior photos.” What happens is they will file a claim with the overriding carrier because they’re like your insurance agent. It will have an adjuster assigned to the property who will go out, take a look, probably call me and ask me a million questions. Get as much information as possible and then determine was it an insurable claim? How much should I have insured for and a lot of those things? 

Because you did a post about this in the group, I had a couple of takeaways. For one, this was not a minor fire. 

It’s a complete loss. 

The initial reaction for people who haven’t dealt with this or haven’t dealt with notes is maybe too much. Probably the most common reaction is, “I’m sorry. This is bad.” If you’ve been in this business for a few years, certain things roll off your back. I’m not saying this isn’t something noteworthy. From an investment standpoint, it may not be the worst thing in the world. 

This is more of an operational thing on a business. There are two types of ways you can insure a property. I’m not going to go into the solo insurance but you can insure it more based on your UPB or you can insure it for your replacement value, which, by most underwriters, is between $90 and $120 a square foot. This was a contract for deed. I’m on a title. Let’s say UPB was $15,000 and it was 1,000 square foot property and I insured it for $90 a square foot. I insured it for $90,000. 

Let’s call it a penny per $100 or whatever it is. A $90,000 property is $900 a year. It’s rough numbers. Compare to if the UPB may have been $15,000, it would be $150 a year. Instead of paying $12 a month, maybe you’re paying $60 a month. You’re paying a lot more than $45 but if you have a claim and you have a total loss, would you rather have $15,000 or $90,000? That $75,000 delta can pay a lot of months of premium upcharge on things. In many instances, you can’t over-insure a property. You can’t overcharge but you can put a replacement value. It was a property I had and I foreclosed upon. 

We’ll do a full-blown case study on it and as you mentioned, I’ve been in the business for several years. Some of the stuff rolls off. There’s a principle that I read about. I can’t think of what it is. It’s a human reaction that’s negative in the sense of as things happen to you, you get used to them, which is bad because then you’re not as reactionary to certain things. It’s probably good and bad. We’ll have a therapy session later on in that perspective. That is my trials and tribulations. I’m also trying to negotiate a short payoff before a foreclosure sale coming up. What’s the largest cleanup bill you’ve ever gotten?  

Probably $2,000. 

My quotes are $9,000, $13,000 and $15,000. I have a 1-acre property in Florida. The problem is not the house. The house would probably be about $1,500 or so. It’s the yard. They’ve got two cars. They’ve got rolls of chain link fence. They’ve got barrels, buckets and tires. It’s a mess. They’re thinking that it’s probably going to be around 10 to 15 dumpsters. It rolls off because it’s a deal that probably after this, I’ll be all in for mid-$20,000 to $30,000. We’re going to list the property probably for mid-$50,000. It’s still not a bad deal. 

This one is going to be interesting. I’ve got another one that the borrower was a pain in the ass. We did a deed in lieu, cancellation of the land contract. They’re supposed to be out by a specific date. They didn’t move out. They’re supposed to keep the place broom swept. In the front door, when you walk in, there was a Swiffer with a Swiffer box. That was hilarious. They almost intentionally left it there. This place is trashed. There are urine bottles everywhere. It’s disgusting. I reached out to the attorney and I’m like, “This borrower has money. I’m going to get a quote. I’m going back after them.” The whole time, this borrower was a complete A-hole. I’m talking about this on the show and we’re trying to do good deeds but when people act in that type of manner, it’s frustrating. I’ll help somebody all day long like this one. Hopefully, we can get a short payoff before foreclosure and it’s a win-win for everyone. 

There are two types of ways you can insure a property. You can insure it based on your UPB, or you can insure it for your replacement value. Click To Tweet

There’s still a responsibility on the borrower’s end to follow through and keep up with their end of the bargain. 

It was one thing if it’s like, “There are a few things here and there.” This one will probably top $15,000. It’s a twenty-acre property. 

That’s wild. 

We finally are going to make it to our topic. I’m sorry, Jamie. 

The people love it. What is our main topic, Chris? 

We get asked a lot about where can I learn, what type of conferences or what type of events should I be attending? In this episode, we’re going to talk about those events. What are the events in 2021 that people have either gone to in the past, some that you might want to check out and some to do some research on? These aren’t strictly note-related because you have to remember, we deal with servicers, attorneys, hedge funds and preservation companies. We’re going to give you some other ideas. A lot of these, I got to give credit to Matt Kelley. 

For those who don’t know Matt, he’s on the West Coast. He has a Facebook group, it’s Note & Mortgage Investing Simplified. He’s a super-smart guy. He’s got Bill Tan in an interview. He is one that tries to get people to think outside the box. I appreciate it. He’s like me. He’s no BS type of guy. You have to have thick skin when you talk to Matt because he’s going to let you know the truth. It’s great that he puts some of these out there to get people thinking. There are a few on this list that I got from him and a few others that I’ve seen and been involved in or I’ve also been curious about that I may check out. 

I have a list of 5 or 6 of the bigger ones. When I say bigger, I mean more well-known to note investing. We can then branch off into the ones you were talking about. Cash Flow Expo is going on, which you are speaking. This is Fred and Tracy, CashFlowExpo.com. Do you want to speak about it at all, Chris? 

Sure. The Cash Flow Expo, Fred and Tracy put it on. It’s free for investors. It’s all about note investing, different strategies, and different investors. What’s cool about it is the note investing industry is a little bit of a click. I’ll put the elephant in the room. There is usually the click of people who learned originally from Scott Carson to Eddie Speed. The difference between the two is one was NPLs and one was performing loans. It was like the Berlin Wall separation type thing between those two groups, a lot of times. 

What Fred and Tracy have done is because one of those people is not relevant for many reasons we’re not going to talk about, people have morphed into a group. They pick people from all different types of clicks to come speak, which I appreciate from that standpoint. I am doing it. All the events are pre-recorded. I’ve already recorded mine and it’s talking about the true cost of owning non-performing loans. We all know about the traditional costs of BPOs, title reports and foreclosure. In one of the slides, I put a lineup like a jail lineup. I put one to one and then the one at the end is, “Who’s this?” I circle it. What I talk about the entire time are all the costs people don’t understand and things that can happen. Check it out. 

I was looking at their lineup. 

It’s free if you watch it within the first 72 hours. 

To keep the videos for a lifetime, you do have to pay which is standard for a lot of these. I was impressed with their lineup. 

It’s a good lineup and to have for free, if you have the availability, it’s unbelievable. The cost is only $100. 

It’s $97 for lifetime access. We’re not trying to go too far in the weeds on each one. I’ve been talking about Dan Sullivan’s book, Who Not How. I read that book. It’s good. It’s an easy read. I was impressed that they got him. I said his last name incorrectly on a different podcast so I had to correct myself. Geoff Woods from The ONE thing. It’s not just note investing topics. It’s business and mindset and things like that and Eddie Speed. 

Dave Franecki is on there. 

Chris Seveney, Rick Allen, Kevin Shortle, Paul Birkett and a lot of big names. It’s a good lineup. Check it out. 

I’ve got one that I’m interested in. IMN.org has a distressed asset event. You and I have spoken at those in the past. In-person, they’re more for a higher-level investor. Somebody who knows a lot of lingo and notes. If you’re brand spanking new, if you were to go to an event, it might be a little overwhelming. Being virtual there, they’re great. They’ve got one coming up that is Bank Special Assets Conference. That’s one that I’m interested in. For those that are newer in the space, some of the lingo is, when you hear the term secondary marketing or special assets, that’s what distressed debt is. It’s from their secondary marketing department or their special assets department. That’s one that I’m putting on my little checklist that I want to possibly check out. 

For people who are unfamiliar with IMN, their whole thing is doing events. This is not a note-specific organization but they’re good at the actual logistics of putting an event together. The one that I participated in before, which you did as well, we had several calls leading up to it, a tech call and then a rehearsal call. It was live. I don’t think it was pre-recorded if I remember correctly. They’re good at putting the event on. 

Here is a mid-episode Note and Bolt. You get the list of everyone that attends and you log and time in. I sent people a message saying, “Too bad we couldn’t be in-person to the event. I’d love to catch up and chat about your business at some point in time.” I cherry-picked the people I already knew I was going to send it to them. I probably had about 100 phone calls after that event. I talked to different types of companies and software. 

There’s a company I’m working with on some certain software. I’ll keep quiet until we see if it’s legit. Also, there are probably 5 or 6 sellers that I connected with. The challenge is they’re looking for a $10 million to $20 million buy. I’m not there yet but eventually with our fund that we haven’t marketed or talked about yet. It’s one of those things where I put it in a little tickler file like, “When I get to that, here are some people I can reach out to.” 

 

That’s good. I’ve never been to the in-person event but I know people have found a lot of assets there. It’s one to keep on your list. The next one I had, and these are in no particular order, is NoteExpo. It’s scheduled to be in-person. This is in Texas. This is Eddie Speed and Bob Repass. 

The Colonial Group, which is Eddie, Bob and a bunch of others. 

It’s often highly recommended. I have never been there. Do you have any thoughts on this one, Chris? 

I’ve never been there. I heard it’s a great event for people to learn different techniques and so forth. From what I hear, Eddie puts on a good event. In the past, there are a lot of people a lot of new investors there. Sometimes it’s not just meeting experienced investors but also meeting new investors that try to share stories as well because you’re all at that same point of learning. It’s good to network and to get an understanding from that perspective. 

I’ll throw in another one quickly, NoteWorthy Investor Summit. This one maybe changed hands a couple of years ago. 

Is it Ben Fredericks’ now? 

Yes. They were pushing to have it in-person in Orlando but they went virtual. They decided that it wasn’t going to happen in 2021. I’ve never been to it. Do you know anyone who’s attended that one? 

I know some people. It’s a pretty decent event as well. I haven’t attended it. I haven’t done a lot of research on it. This episode isn’t for us to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do. It gives you some things you can go research from that perspective. For people who don’t know Ben, Ben used to be heavily involved in notes and some CFDs. He switched his business structure where they’re buying a lot of REOs and they’re selling REOs. They’re also getting a bunch of them on owner financing and turning around and flipping those notes. 

That’s going to be a huge thing, even more so, going forward. Eddie Speed was on our show. It’s only going to grow. That niche is only going to expand. 

It will be because people are going to have a harder time lending. Everything is going to the whole thought process of cutting out the middleman in many instances. If you go to a bank that has done sales to another lender, it’ll be interesting to see where that goes. I’m going to mention one and this is someone considered a competitor to IMN. I joined this group. It was $1,000. It’s called FamilyOffice.org. What’s awesome about this is they have tons of conferences. Every week or two weeks, they have something they’re putting on. Plus, they have other training sessions about private equity, how to manage a fund, how to raise money, investor influence and being a general partner versus a limited partner. 

They’ve got some events coming up, an investor influence workshop on how to market yourself, a capital raising workshop that plays off of that. I took their capital-raising course, which was good. There was not a BS type of thing. It was definitive. You’re going to learn. There are a lot of a couple of reasons you got to go do it but they gave a lot of reasoning behind it and a lot more strategy. They go on LinkedIn and market to people on these different sites. 

For those who don’t know what a family office is, this is not a dictionary definition. You’re setting up an office that manages high net worth families. It could be more than one family. You’re strategizing the big picture for wealth management. It’s high net worth individuals that Family Office works for. 

Family Office gets a lot of money from super wealthy, high net worth families. Because of that, they get to see a lot of opportunities from a lot of these deals. They also bring in insurance money so they can bring in some cheaper money. What they’re looking for is diversification. There are different types of family offices, like the real estate one. There are venture capital ones that swing or miss and so forth. 

They’re not looking for growth. They’re looking for protection and diversification. They’ve already got their wealth. 

Sometimes, events are not just for meeting experienced investors but also meeting new investors that try to share stories. Click To Tweet

If you take their capital raising, it starts with, “Rule number one, what are they looking for? Preservation of capital and Integrity. Number three, preservation of capital.” It’s all about the preservation of capital. People should check out that group. They consider themselves a competitor to the IMN a little bit because of some of the circles that they play in and some of the same people in the industry as well. 

Did you want to hit another one? 

Another one is ACA International. It’s the American Creditors Association. It’s debt collectors, servicers or anybody who’s collecting payments. It’s a group I belong to. It’s where I took the course on the Fair Debt Collection, how to make phone calls and stuff. They’ve got a lot of good information. They have regular training and seminars throughout the year and then they have an annual convention. When you look at who’s going to be at this convention, it’s other people who are involved in the debt business. Based on that, you’ll probably meet a lot of different people from vendors to other collectors to debt collectors and servicers. It is everyone involved in the business. It might not be mortgage debt. It might be car debt and everything else but everybody plays in a circle that it’s always good to network and meet others. 

There’s so much confusion around this whole CFPB, Dodd-Frank, what’s allowed and what’s not, underwriting and all that stuff. 

Their website is ACAInternational.org. They’ve got one where they’re doing a CFPB resource center. Because of some of the new CFPB rules, they’re having webinars and seminars on CFPB. They record it and you can go and watch. They have an annual convention that a lot of people attend. 

One I had on my list as well is the Diversified Mortgage Expo, DME. Kimberly and Liz put this on and they were also pushing hard to have it in-person. It was going to be in Nashville. I’ve never been to Nashville. I was excited about going to that one. They pivoted and had to do it virtually. You and I both participated in that one. I got the chance to talk about partials on that one. Go check that out. For having to pivot so much and for putting on their first event, it was well done. Any thoughts on that? 

That’s a great event. I spoke at that event. That one used to be up in Jersey. It was run by prior people and then Kimberly and Liz took it over. They’re trying to reshape it because some of the past events had a lot of people involved who weren’t sunny. They’re the opposite of sunny. 

They also changed because it was The Distressed Mortgages Expo. They’re including more performing and expanding the topics. 

It’s a great conference. You’ll see a lot of experienced people on there, sharing a lot of stories and a lot of case studies as well. They’ve done a good job transitioning that to not a complete sales pitch. The thing I loved the best was they had breakout rooms. I was in one with Wayne Snell and we were sharing war stories. I hadn’t spoken to Wayne in probably a year. People can sit there and listen and also participate. 

Bill McCafferty and Dave Van Horn were there. It’s probably the New Jersey connection there. Those are some experienced people in the industry as well. They participated before. 

One popped in my head when you mentioned Bill McCafferty. I thought of Pennsylvania. Dave Van Horn runs MidAtlantic Summit. 

I never participated but it looks pretty good. With the breakout sessions, they also had two tracks. It was neat. Maybe one for more experienced investors and one for maybe less experienced. You have two topics to choose from. At the same time, you’re not stuck in one track for topics. I thought that was pretty neat how he did that. 

I threw in there the MidAtlantic Conference. I haven’t been in it. It’s up in the Pennsylvania area. If people don’t know who Dave Van Horn is, he’s been on the podcast. He has all different real estate. He’s got $120 million under management. He’s doing well. Also, that brings in a lot of people and not just note investors. There are fix and flippers, buy and hold, lenders and banks. There are a lot of people because Dave knows everybody. 

A shameless plug for that episode. I thought it was one of the best ones because he dropped so much knowledge. He’s soft-spoken. He’s not boastful at all. He’s done so many different things within real estate and note investing. I highly recommend people to go back and re-read that episode. 

I’m putting you on the spot. Who talks more, me or Dave? 

You talk more. 

Do you have another one? 

I have Paper Source. I have personally attended this one back in March 2018. They were trying to hold the in-person event in 2020 but had to pivot to the online format. I thoroughly enjoyed it when I went to it. It’s good for newer note investors. You’re not going to get into the weeds on your entire note investing business but they do bring together a lot of seller financing stuff, a lot of how you can work rental properties along with your note business. I know John Schaub. I met him there briefly. He’s been in the rental space for a long time. He also does a lot of note stuff as well.  

It was good for both the content and the networking. There’s not a lot of pitching at all. I recommend it. If you’ve been in notes for years, the networking part is going to be better than the presentations themselves. They also have Tom Henderson who’s smart on the numbers and doing all creative strategies with notes. They call him The Note Professor. It’s out in Vegas. I enjoyed it. It was a good event. Hopefully, they can get back to the in-person format. 

I have another show idea. That’s part of my Note and Bolt. 

Paper Source, any thoughts on that one? 

I haven’t been there. For people who know me, I’ve been to 1 or 2 live events. My wife is from overseas. She’s been to 50 different countries and there’s me. The furthest West I’ve been to is Vegas. I’ve been there twice. The last time I’ve been was 2004. Besides that, I’ve been to Texas. Everything else is local or I’ll go to the Caribbean. I’ve to Europe once. I’m not that much of a traveler. I hate flying. I’m a control freak, if you haven’t noticed. 

On the Paper Source, they also have the newsletter which is a pretty good value. It’s an actual paper newsletter that arrives in the mail once a month. There are a lot of good articles in there. I recommend newer note investors to check it out. 

The one thing I’ll mention that I’ve heard and I haven’t been there and I’d be curious to hear people’s opinion is I hear some of the speakers make it seem like note investing is a little too easy. We’re sharing some of these big homerun deals and there are a lot of sales going on at it. 

Some of that may be true. I do think they tend to focus more on performing notes, creative financing strategies, creative note strategies, and not so much on the institutional NPLs. It does get you fired up to get into notes. They may be somewhat anti-fund because of certain horror stories with certain funds out there. I do think they try to protect the newer note investors from making bad decisions. 

I’m going to mention Mortgage Bankers Association, MBA.org. They have an annual convention in October 2021. They also have a Secondary Markets Conference that is coming up. It’s online as well. If you go to MBA.org, you can look at some of their events. This one is about more independent banks and secondary markets. Some of these things depend if they’re free or there’s a cost. If you get the list, the list is worth more than probably the content sometimes. 

The list of the participants or the attendees. 

Sometimes you can ask for the list as well. I wanted to mention that MBA.org is another organization to keep on your radar. 

That’s a good one. I’m done with my list. Do you have any more? 

I went to this one and it’s in Washington, DC but I didn’t physically go to it. I did it virtually. It’s the National Property Preservation Conference. It’s sponsored by Auction.com, Ten-X, and Williams & Williams. Most of those companies are owned by one humungous company. It’s almost like your soda companies. It’s basically PepsiCo and Coca-Cola. What was interesting is there’s a lot of data on market research and foreclosures. It’s people you deal with in this industry like preservation companies. There are some servicers there and some software vendors there. There are many people that attend to hear what’s going on in real estate that you meet a lot of different people. You network. 

I met three different property preservation companies, two of them of which I’m starting to use. Also, I reached out to people at Williams & Williams. I get access to their list. I’m on their VIP list where they’ll send me the assets before they get put up on the website. Ten-X sent me some stuff on how to set some alerts and stuff for when they have notes that pop up. Most of their stuff is commercial but they still have stuff that comes up. You meet a lot of interesting large players in this business that can put you in touch with other individuals as well. 

That’s a good one. The fact that we’re all trying to look into our crystal ball and see what’s going to happen for 2021 as far as economic conditions, market conditions, note pricing, real estate, and all that. These bigger companies have the budget, manpower, time and resources to be able to devote to conducting that research. Whereas your everyday note investor maybe doesn’t have that luxury. The note world can be pretty small, let’s face it. A lot of the ones you’re mentioning are good to realize that there’s a bigger world out there. 

That’s the problem in the note space. Look at our podcast. I would love to have one million readers but it’s such a small and niche industry. We know we’re not going to get to that point because there’s not a lot of people doing this. Hopefully, we provide that value that people want. What do you think? That’s a pretty good list. It can keep people busy with different things to try. If you’re a new reader and getting started, here some great events you could do. Let’s shift gears, Note and Bolt. 

I’ve got one. Full circle, it ties back into my trials and tribulations. This deal that I’m closing on reminded me that some of these one-off mom-and-pop seller finance deals. To walk people through this deal quickly, the property was sold to the tenant. The new homeowner/borrower has been in the property making rental payments for many years with strong employment history and that kind of thing. The landlord is 85 years old and didn’t want the property anymore. He sold it in April of 2020. I’m buying the note. This landlord is not somebody who originates a lot of mortgage notes. He doesn’t necessarily know the business. You might have to check things a little more thoroughly in that regard. This is not the same thing as buying an institutional note. 

My Note and Bolt is if you’re buying one of these, make sure to prepare and have the borrower sign an Estoppel Letter. That Estoppel Letter helps protect you. What it breaks down to is what’s the principal balance of this loan at this time? At that point, I know pay history can validate a note but maybe the note wasn’t underwritten through Dodd-Frank. Maybe it was a one-off. That could potentially be challenged in court later on. If you have this estoppel letter where the borrower says, “I’ve made seven payments. The UPB is now $50,000.” There you go. When you board it with your servicer, maybe this loan was not with a servicer, that estoppel letter can help you out in protecting your interests and getting everyone on the same page. It helps your servicer as well to board the loan properly. 

We should do an episode on a case study of buying a loan that’s not with a servicer. I’m mentoring somebody and it has been a fiasco. 

The second Note and Bolt is to prepare the goodbye letter. As the note buyer, I’ve done this before and I’m doing it on this one as well, it’s likely that this note seller has no idea what that even is. 

This person didn’t and they refuse to send it. Thankfully, it was on a Paperstac. We got Brett and Rick involved and said, “Can you tell this borrower it’s a RESPA requirement that you have to send because we can’t transfer the loan to the new servicer until the goodbye letter goes out so they can send a hello letter?” That would be a good case study as well. I hope you’re taking all of these notes. My Note and Bolt is we went through and probably named a dozen events you could go to. 

 

My Note and Bolt is when you attend these events, there are two things not to do. One is if you’re new, try to oversell yourself. It’s okay to say, “I’m here to learn. I’m new.” Share your experience and so forth. That’s perfectly fine. That’s what people want to hear. People don’t want to hear somebody BS-ing them all the time, “I’ve been doing this for this long,” when you aren’t doing much. That’s one. The second is, on the same token, don’t sit quietly. It doesn’t matter what event you’re at. I’ve been on video and I used to do a round table for people and I’d have twenty people on. We’ll try and get people to interact and people will sit there like church mice and be completely quiet. Ask a question. 

We should do an episode, top five questions asked if you’re a newbie at a conference. “I’m interested in performing loans. What would you say the three most critical things to understand about a performing loan? I’m interested in non-performing loans. Do you recommend I start with a non-performing loan or performing loan?” Some softball questions that you can ask that’s not a stupid question because there is no such thing as a stupid question but it will get interaction. Trust me, I’m horrible with names but because I only have about two people who ask a question, those are the two people I remember. Jamie, we should probably do an episode of the top five questions you could ask. People could go to this. Unfortunately, probably every sane person would ask the same question. Try and modify it a little bit based on your criteria or something from that perspective. 

You should never be afraid to ask. We touched on it briefly with Dominic previously. He’s an attorney. He should know everything. Nobody knows everything. There are a lot of topics that Chris and I have no clue about. That’s okay, that’s how you learn. I don’t know how else you learn. I couldn’t agree more. 

We’re finished with our Notes and Bolts. Any final thoughts for this episode or special announcements? You took a little next step, a little leap on something. Do you want to share it? 

I do have a weekly newsletter. In that, I’ve mentioned the new fund that Chris and I have. It’s called the Integrity Mortgage Note Fund. Chris and I each have a little bit of information on our websites about it. I’m excited. Chris, you’re always excited. We have a fund that we can start raising capital. I’m excited about it. Chris, any thoughts about that? 

It’s a fund that does offer a preferred return to investors, plus excess distributions. One of the things people have seen over the last few years is a lot of investors have gotten away from that excess distribution component. We’ve all seen the preferred returns continue to decrease. The reality of it is returns have been suppressed because of pricing and lack of inventory like in all other aspects of real estate. For people who want to get in on the note fund, it’s a good example of getting a preferred return but also sharing some of the upside with people. It’s an open-ended fund. It’s for accredited investors only. People can invest pretty much at any point in time. We are going to have certain periods where there will be windows for people to put investments in there. The minimum investment is $25,000. I know a lot of other funds might have a $50,000 or $100,000 minimum. It is a Regulation D 506(c) fund. 

The fund, in general, you’re spreading out your risk. You may be limiting some of your upside a little bit but our fund does have that ability for the upside as well. 

One of the things that I’ve done in some of my other funds that people love is when we do our quarterly updates. We shared war stories. It’s almost like a podcast episode. I try and do it bi-weekly but sometimes it might be every three weeks. It’s a newsletter of some of the happenings and goings-on. People love reading stuff. I’ve got one about our house burning down. I leave it to interact with them and say, “We had a house burned down.” A lot of people then would be like, “What’s happening with that?” It sparks interaction. I’m not telling them what’s happening. I’ll put it out there like something happened and it gets them involved. Also, it lets me know if they’re reading it. It’s fun. 

Another thing I’ll mention quickly is the definition of accredited investor is changing. It should be opening up for some additional people to become accredited. I’m not a legal expert on that but that’s when that goes into the implementation. If you think you might be accredited, you might be. Check it out and google it. 

That’s all I’ve got. Jamie, anything else?  

This has been good. I get this question a lot from brand–new note investors, “What events should we go to? What training should I undertake?” We covered a lot of ground. Hopefully, we added some value. 

We covered cover value on events. Maybe we’ll do one on books or other things as well. Unfortunately, I’m not that big of a book reader. You probably have to take the lead on some of those. I may have to go read some books. This is great for people who are getting started. Get their brain spinning to start thinking of other ideas and things to look into because part of this business is building your team. A lot of these conferences will give you the resources to meet people to build that team in place. 

Why not learn from other people’s experiences? 

Thank you all for joining us on this episode of the Good Deeds Note Investing podcast. As always, you can follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, Google and Amazon. As we always like to say, go out and do some good deeds. Thank you, everyone. 

 

Important links:

• Note & Mortgage Investing Simplified 
• CashFlowExpo.com 
• Who Not How 
• IMN.org 
• NoteExpo 
• NoteWorthy Investor Summit 
• Eddie Speed – past episode 
• FamilyOffice.org 
• ACAInternational.org 
• Diversified Mortgage Expo 
• MidAtlantic Summit 
• Dave Van Horn – past episode  
• Paper Source 
• National Property Preservation Conference 
• Auction.com 
• Ten-X 
• Williams & Williams 
• Dominic Silvestri – past episode 
• The ONE thing 
• MBA.org 
• Integrity Mortgage Note Fund 
• iTunes – Good Deeds Note Investing 
• Stitcher – Good Deeds Note Investing 
• Google – Good Deeds Note Investing 
• Amazon – Good Deeds Note Investing 

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