Is it more expensive to get a loan from a bank than to pay for your housing? Chris Seveney’s guest today is Jeff Watson, an attorney licensed in Ohio. Jeff talks with Chris about bill updates on seller financing. Join the conversation to educate yourself about what a seller finance transaction is and what it’s not. How do you know if you should avail seller financing than traditional bank loans? You’ll also hear valuable advice on self-directed IRA and note investments. Don’t miss this episode!

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Listen to the podcast here:

Seller Financing Vs. Bank Loaning: Which One’s For You? With Jeff Watson

We do have a special guest on. We have Jeff Watson from Watson Invested. Jeff is an attorney licensed in Ohio. I’ll make the point throughout this episode that while he is an attorney licensed in Ohio, he is not my attorney or anyone who is reading their attorney either. Please don’t take this as any legal advice throughout this episode. I wanted to have Jeff on because he is considered an industry expert in seller financing and dealing with self-directed IRA investors. We want to talk a little bit about that. Jeff, how are you?

Chris, I’m doing better and better. Thank you for having me and for making it clear. I’m going to reiterate it. I’m licensed to practice only in the state of Ohio. Anything I say here is for educational purposes. It might be a little entertaining or it might not but it’s for educational and informational purposes only. Please do not construe this as legal advice to your specific situation. I am not your lawyer until we have a written signed engagement letter countersigned by me and you have paid me dinero, dollars, wampum money, cashola, Cash App, wired it, ACH-ed it or whatever.

Do you think Bitcoin?

We could talk about that. I’ve got a little bit of crypto here and there. Nothing special but I love it, Chris. These are my enhanced, what I now refer to as my Ricky D Disclaimers, courtesy of a gentleman that has decided to make me have to do additional disclaimers. Hats off to you, Ricky. We’re going to overload that this is educational information only. I am not trying to practice law in any particular state. I’m going to talk about stuff that is under federal auspices probably almost all the way because we’re going to talk about seller financing.

Chris, you picked a perfect time to do that because HR 5013 has been reintroduced into Congress by Congressman Vicente Gonzalez, the Affordable Homeownership Access Act, which is to change with Dodd-Frank, SAFE Act and Truth in Lending to increase the number of seller finance transactions of individuals such as you, me or the fly on the wall reading this show can do.

You’ve done a lot of work with Eddie Speed’s group and a bunch of others on that. Why don’t you talk a little bit about how that got started? Also, I’m curious to know because that has been reintroduced what the amount you’re trying to push for is. I believe the number is very limited that somebody can perform. You have three.

Uno, dos, tres and uno has got to be different from dos and tres. I look at members of Congress and their staffers. I explained this to them because we’ve been fighting this fight for years. They looked at me and 1 or 2 things happened. Their eyes either glaze over because they don’t care or they look at me, shake their head and go, “What else did we screw up?” Let’s talk a little bit about it.

You have to figure out the difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary Cleveland. Click To Tweet

HR 5013, I had the privilege of helping write that bill along with Bob Repass, who’s Eddie Speed’s right-hand man and with Fred Castro, who is one of the lead staffers for Congressman Vicente Gonzalez, who is a Democrat out of Texas. He’s on the border. When I say he’s on the border, I don’t mean he’s on the border. I mean his district is on the American-Mexican border. Seller financing being done correctly would be a huge benefit to his constituents.

This particular bill has got a couple of nuances in it that we’ve not had in the past. Number one, we’re taking the number of three that you’re allowed to do and we’re raising that number to 24. We’re making it extremely clear that this bill only applies to transactions with notes either secured by a mortgage or deed of trust.

Chris, I know that you know more about notes than I do. I’m making it clear. If it doesn’t involve a note and a mortgage or a note and a deed trust, it’s not covered under the Affordable Home Ownership Enhancement Act because we make it abundantly clear for all of the progressive worriers on Capitol Hill that this does not apply to rent-to-own, lease option, land contract, colonials or whatever else you want to call them in Texas or anywhere along the border. It doesn’t apply. If that homeowner does not have a recorded, documented piece of paper saying that they are the vested owner of the property, it is not a seller finance transaction covered under HR 5013.

The first thing that popped into my mind was the land contracts. There’s a lot of land contracts in Ohio because people try and subvert the foreclosure laws and so forth, which I used to buy a lot of them in that state and getting more involved in it. I see that a lot of people who do them individually are completely doing them wrong. That’s unfortunate and probably what sometimes gives a black mark. I’m sure you can share your thoughts on that.

Chris, you are too kind when you say completely doing it wrong. You’re being gentle. It is stupidly inept. I’m going to go back to this. This is where I’m going to get a chance to brag on a mutual friend of ours. Eddie Speed and his organization run a platform where they sell paper. A client of mine that lives in Ohio bought a land installment contract and contacted my office to facilitate making sure that the correct documents were recorded.

I took a look at the package when I showed up and called down the NoteSchool’s office, Notes Direct. I said, “What in the world you let somebody put on your platform?” They go, “What do you mean?” I go, “This is a freight train of disaster.” The second phrase out of their mouth is, “What will it cost for you to fix it?” I said, “Got you.” I fixed it. My client, the guy who bought the land installment contract didn’t have to pay the full freight of me fixing it but it got fixed. It was a performing land installment contract so that made it a lot easier. It was a good deal. Everybody is happy. We just had to clean up the paperwork.

 

We don’t have all day to share horror stories. I’m sure you’ve seen some of that stuff as well as myself and so forth.

Chris, I’m going to flip it around on it. I do want to do this because this is a good conversation. When you’re buying a land contract that’s not been recorded and you know it’s in a state that requires it to be recorded, which pretty much all of them. How much more of a discount do you put on it because it’s not been properly recorded and done right?

People are trying to sell non-recorded land contracts for the same price as conventional paper, which is if anyone’s ever paying that price, it’s a joke. Don’t do it, full disclosure. I’ll give you an idea. I was buying performing land contracts months ago. I bought a pool of them, which a lot of them were like this. What I ended up doing is I went to go convert a lot of them into traditional paper. That’s something that I like to do because also I don’t want to be the owner of these things. I get a letter in the mail from Cuyahoga County for the citation because I have a land contract in Cleveland that the grass wasn’t mowed. I go online to pay the bill because they want you to show up in court and all this stuff. Do you want to guess how much the fine was for not cutting the grass?

It’s $750.

It’s $510. I must have got a discount then but I was like, “Jesus Christ.”

You got a first-time discount. Next time around, they’ll stick a comment in the number. It costs money to give away everything else at the back of landlords so they got to get their money from somewhere.

Back to your question, I was buying that paper at $0.40 on the dollar. It’s heavily discounted.

You had a huge golden nugget, put in your hands by the two of us. If you’re buying paper and it’s a land installment contract that has not been properly recorded, discount the daylights out of it because they’re selling you tainted, corrupt and potentially illegal unenforceable paper.

A lot of it isn’t written properly. I had one that was part of this pool that I bought that didn’t have any language I could recover any legal fees. That was a shame on me. It was nonperforming. It was a three-unit property that the guy was collecting the rent on. I had to go after him, record it and go through the process but my attorney is like, “You realize you can’t collect any of these fees.”

I’ll share this one quick story. Somebody wanted to sell to me. They had the borrower signed the land contract. They never signed it. They never gave the borrower the copy and never recorded it. The borrower stopped paying because he didn’t have a copy of it while living in the house. They’re giving me all the servicing notes and they’re like, “We’re going to sue for eviction.” I’m like, “What are you suing for? You’re the one who never signed or executed the document to give them. I’d do the same thing. If I went to give you a contract, if we had an agreement in place and you never returned it back to me, I’m not going to keep sending you money every month until I get a copy of the contract.” It’s amazing. It blows my mind.

If you've only heard about wholesaling off of a YouTube article, don't go wholesaling. Click To Tweet

Can I represent the occupant homeowner in that case? Please, go ahead and sue. I’m going to take you back on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act because you’re violating a federal law trying to enforce a document you didn’t sign. Let me have you. I’ll just send it over to my friend, Former Attorney General Marc Dann. We’ll talk about how many commas are in the check you’re writing me.

One of the things though getting back on the seller financing and I’m curious to get your opinion is it’s being very important. Ohio and some of these Midwest states where housing is much more inexpensive compared to other areas of the country but at the same time, it’s very expensive to originate loans, which is why most banks or lenders don’t want to lend on properties that are under $50,000, $75,000 or $100,000. Even in the Southern border down near Texas, it’s almost perfect and right for that type of financing from that perspective.

It is right for that kind of financing. I had a deal come across my desk years ago. This couple was trying to buy a house. It was going to be a $50,000 purchase price. The fees being charged by a local community bank were an excessive $6,000 on a $50,000 loan. I’m like, “You can’t afford to do that.” “The lady from the bank says this is the best way to do it.” Pretty quickly it got to where they weren’t going to listen to me so I’m like, “You’re done. Best of luck. Have a nice life. See you later.” I let it go.

Seller financing is huge for not just that price point but here’s one of the other things that we’re doing with this particular piece of legislation. There is no price point in the legislation. You’re probably aware of this just like I am. There is systemic institutional discrimination in the lending industry against people who are signing the front of payroll checks. If you’re a small business owner, if you’re self-employed and you don’t have five years of business records and 3 to 4 years of business and personal tax returns showing where you’re making enough money, you can’t get a traditional Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae or GSE loan. You can’t do it.

You’ve got the income and a 20% or 15% down payment. Your credit score is great but because you have chosen to sign the front of the payroll paycheck for yourself and your employees, you can’t go get that loan. This is where seller financing can help fill that gap. Here’s the other part. I did something on NoteSchool TV. Check it out. It’s good stuff. The home affordability issue and financing, 1 out of 3 people that used to be able to pre-COVID-19 qualify for a bank loan to buy a house, no longer qualifies. Prices are going up and up. There are fewer and fewer people who can qualify for a new bank loan to buy a home. That makes it comes back to this very interesting question. Who’s buying all the houses? Institutions are buying them. They’re gobbling them up.

They’re reducing the amount of inventory in the market so it raises the prices. These funds will take them to hold them. They’ve got the cash that they paid nothing for their money. They’re sitting on all these pockets of cash that ends up flowing to them from the government printing however many trillions we’ve printed. They’ll go out and buy them. Like Zillow and all these other companies will try and get into real estate. Most likely in five years, they’ll probably start selling it off again because they realized that their plan probably doesn’t work that well. At the end of the day, it still impacts many others at this point in time. I don’t know how many posts I see on social media about people trying to buy houses, putting in offers and they’re losing it to all-cash offers to institutions.

It’s happening all the time. I’m going to give a piece of advice. I’ve got to do something later or I’m going to talk to another segment over the investing community. Chris, this is completely off the script. We didn’t even have a script. You got to figure out the difference between primary, secondary and tertiary. Cleveland, Ohio is a primary market. I’m not trying to buy Cleveland, Ohio. I’m trying to sell in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

Mentor, Ohio is a very nice secondary market. People live in Mentor. They drive into Cleveland. They have nice jobs. They go to University Hospitals, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland State and Case Western. They work for Eaton or whomever. They have nice six-figure jobs. I’m not trying to buy there. I’m trying to buy in the tertiary markets, the markets where the people who will drive from there to Mentor to work. That’s the market I live in. I live in a tertiary market. That’s where there’s not that much competition. The hedge funds aren’t here yet. The broker is a joke. Wholesalers need to figure out to go to those tertiary markets. Jeff, they don’t even know how to pronounce the names, let alone find them on a map.

No matter what aspect of real estate and a lot of people know I don’t have much of a filter. There are good wholesalers out there. There are people who heard on a radio article or something and then all of a sudden it’s like, “I’m going to wake up tomorrow and be a wholesaler.” It’s like, “I’m going to wake up tomorrow and be a pilot. Jeff, I’ll fly Southwest flight across the country for you.”

I’m going to go on a little tangent here. This is going to sound overdramatic but I want you to get this. I had the opportunity to be on a Southwest Airlines flight. We were back on the Boeing 737-800 Max Air. That’s the plane everybody was freaking out about. It was nice to be back on that plane. It is a far superior plane, far more comfortable for the passenger. I’m talking with a couple of my pilot buddies. The day after those crashes, I’d had gotten on a Max Air. If someone from Southwest or United would train them that had been at the controls, I’d fly it all day long. He goes, “You’re right. We’re trying how to do it. We got the training manual. We knew what to do. When the software would do something stupid, we knew what to do about it.”

It’s the same thing. I am privileged to represent some of the smartest, largest, bestest wholesalers in the United States of America. They’re trained and know what they’re doing. They’ve got the manuals, systems and procedures. If you’ve only got 200 hours of seat time, don’t go get the Max Air. If you’ve only heard about wholesaling off of a YouTube article, only read a couple of magazine articles and watched a few videos don’t go wholesaling. By the way, don’t go buying notes either.

There’s one thing that leads to a lot of this. People sometimes get sold by somebody else like, “You can do this without any money.” “Maybe but you have chances to become a professional athlete.” Wholesaling is very cost-intensive because the wholesalers are spending $50,000 a month on marketing and mailings. It’s the same thing with notes. If you only have $20,000 or $50,000 to buy a note, it’s like, “Can you buy one?” “Yes.”

You’re going to make maybe 10% on that note so you’ll make a few thousand bucks but the time you may have to spend especially with the nonperforming to work it out, you’re better off flipping burgers somewhere. No offense to people who flip the burgers but those jobs are typically a low wage. That’s what you end up probably paying yourself. You get the education but you need to figure out what your plan is to scale. It’s like any business in this country. Every business is backed by having financial stability. Most businesses fail in this country mostly because of cashflow and running out of money.

Things around the cashflow that run out of money are, number one, don’t understand how to not have dumb debt service. They don’t understand taxes or how to have a spending program and a marketing budget. Chris, I’ve sat there across this table from wholesalers that are going under. They’ll tell me their marketing budget was $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a month. It was 3, 4 months into something like that when they realize that their outgo was exceeding their income. I don’t know about you but I don’t think I could stay in business that much or that long if I’m spending $50,000 a month to stay in business and I’m not making anything. After five days of that, I’d be like, “Something’s not right here.” They didn’t catch on until 2, 3 months into that.

I’ve been a part of the general contracting side acquisitions for a large company that I used to work for. What we used to find is the smaller general contractors used to do what’s called Bucket Accounting. With each construction project, they wouldn’t manage that budget individually so they won’t know what projects were making money or not. All the money coming in was going into one bucket and then the payroll for the job come out every month.

They realized, “We’re losing $1 million or $2 million over here. We still got eight months on this project left. How are we going to pay this?” It’s always too late because people don’t keep a fine eye on their finances. One advice I’ll give to people is no matter what business you run, you got to be watching your money like a hawk every day, every month to make sure you reconcile and understand your inflows and outflows every month.

Know your numbers on a minimum of a weekly basis. Click To Tweet

Know your numbers on a minimum of a weekly basis. There’s one of the best pieces of advice that I was given by a very sophisticated long-time legendary investor. His name is Lyle Wall. He’s going to be speaking at NoteWorthy in Orlando, Florida. Lyle is bigger than NoteWorthy in my opinion. He is a legend in self-directed IRA space as well. He one time taught me, he said, “Know your daily number.”

What is your daily nut? What are you doing to make sure that you’re covering your daily nut on a passive basis? When you get to the point in time where your rents, interest income and royalty cashflows aren’t excessive what it costs you per day to stay alive, you’re financially independent but if you don’t know what that number is, you’ll never know how to get there.

Ninety-nine percent of the people including myself don’t know what my number to get financial independence is. My wife does. Most people reading don’t know what their expenditures are every month. Most people probably never bounce a checkbook from that perspective. Most don’t even know what their take-home pay is. They know what their salary is but they don’t know after taxes and everything else or what their take-home pay is. It’s unfortunate.

This is September 3rd, 2021. I get paid on September 1st, 2021. Every dollar that goes into my personal checking account has a mission and a job statement. I might sound like some guy that’s got the third-largest radio talk show in America. I might do that. Every dollar has a job and an assignment. I’ve got so many dollars lined up every month that they’re going into my 401(k), go do this and that, pay for health insurance. I got it all lined out and I know how much is mine to go do what I want to with.

It’s not difficult. I want to pivot a little bit because you mentioned your 401k and some self-directed IRA. That’s a space also that you’re heavily involved in as well.

That’s my favorite space. My favorite thing to do at night, Chris, when I’m lying there in bed with my head on my pillow is think, “Is there a better way to put together this deal where the buyer wins, the seller wins and the IRS loses, involving a self-directed retirement account?” I love that. I did a deal that was fun. A client that lives out West has two IRAs. She and her husband have two IRAs at a custodian here in Ohio. They wanted to lend out of their IRAs to an investor in Texas who had sold a home on seller financing. He wanted to pledge that note and deed of trust as collateral. I got a chance to put together the paperwork to where they could do that. There’s a lot more paperwork to that than there is doing a regular, private lending, hard money loan on these deals.

I think I know who that company is in Ohio because I worked with them a lot. Those are my investors. There’s a lot of paperwork and a lot of back and forth on everything involved with using an IRA.

There were more pieces of paper involved with putting it out where it was a collateral pledge, where they’re pledging the collateral, specifically the recorded deed of trust and the note. I’m letting the borrower keep the note in their possession but recorded stuff on the public record and all that other stuff. There’s more paperwork than if I was just making a loan to secure a piece of house.

If it’s just a house, I’m going to do a note in a mortgage with a title commitment, lenders policy, personal guarantee and we’re done but there were fewer more other pieces of paper documents. Those are the kinds of deals I love because this guy can go reload his capital machine. He bought the house at a good price, fixed it up, sold it, got a good buyer in there and so on. My people can go put their money to work at a double-digit rate of return so they’re happy. Everybody is moving on.

There are lots of win-win situations especially with the self-directed IRA. It’s avoiding the IRS from that perspective because it seems like every time I turn around, the IRS is trying to find another way to continue the grab from that perspective and so forth. If they eventually do get rid of the long-term capital gains and do tax everything as ordinary income, you’ll probably see a lot more people with IRAs or normal looking even more seller financing. You’re almost at that same level playing field of how the taxes work on some of the seller financing deals and stuff.

 

With the self-directed IRAs, what’s interesting for me is I did not find out about self-directed IRAs until probably 2015 or 2016. I had switched companies in the past. The only options any employer will tell you are fidelity investments and no knock to fidelity. I have a lot of friends that worked there up in Boston. I talked to them, they’re like, “Your options are to keep it with whoever has it or transfer it to your new company.” There was never that third option of, “You can go self-direct this thing.” My buddy who has a wife that works for a major institution that deals with investments never knew about it as well. It’s interesting because all these large institutions never in a million years want anybody to know that this is even a viable option.

They want you to think that you’re limited to picking a small selection of stocks, bonds, mutual funds and ETFs. That’s it. You’re self-directed is limited to that because believe it or not, every account holder has to pick their investment options. Even if you’re in a 401(k) plan, you’ve got to decide. “Out of the options that my employer makes available through the 401(k), which one am I going to pick?” If you ever leave an employer, there are two things I want you to do. Write this down. I want you to take your entire 401(k) from that and do a direct rollover to an IRA. That is basic financial planning 101.

Every financial planner that has two grains of salt to its credibility will tell you that. I’m not practicing law without a license. Hang in there. It’s national policy. It’s governed under federal law. Ricky D, you got me. Are you good? The second thing I want you to do then is you owe it to yourself to pick who the custodian is going to be for that IRA. Is it going to be Fidelity, American Funds, Janus, Quest Trust, CamaPlan? Is it going to Quest Trust, Equity Trust, iPlan, Kingdom Trust or Quest Trust? I said Quest three times, didn’t I?

Yes, you did.

Maybe that’s because I’m on the Board of Directors of that company and I think they’re fantastic.

Speaking of IRAs, there’s also a lot of bad information out there. What’s the one piece of information you see a lot out there that you may have seen that you do the face palm like, “People, you cannot do that with an IRA?” I’m curious about the one that you see a lot.

You cannot do business with your IRA. You cannot treat it as if it’s your own personal little piggy bank. You have to treat it as a separate, complete and distinct entity to who you owe a fiduciary duty. I’m going to make one other comment about this. You, the account holder, the person whose name is on the account, are ultimately responsible for determining, selecting and picking which investments you’re going to put that money into.

If you’re going to do the ostrich maneuver and go stick it in a bank’s Certificate of Depression, fine. If you’re going to go do other high-risk stuff like trade cryptocurrency, fine. That’s your business but it’s incumbent on you to do the due diligence. My second piece of advice is universal advice given by all good financial planners and good attorneys. It does not matter to what state you’re in, Ricky D, don’t invest in something you do not understand.

For the Ricky D people out there, I believe you’re not also a certified financial planner.

Don't invest in something you don't understand. Click To Tweet

I am not a certified financial planner and I don’t have to be a certified financial planner because my law license allows me to give opinions on stuff like this but I’m not giving any legal opinions because I don’t have any specific factual situations in front of me. I’m sharing well-established, well-known, generally accepted financial principles, Ricky D.

You mentioned Quest and you’re on the board. You hit upon that. You can’t go to Quest and be, “Is this a good investment? Do you know this investor? Does this investor has a good reputation?” Quest isn’t there to do that or any IRA. Quest is probably the leader in providing information and training out there from their website and so forth. I’ve worked with many other IRAs and Quest. I do have no accounts with Quest, full disclosure. I’ve seen a lot of the products that they put out in the training.

It’s the same with Equity Trust. They do a pretty good job too with a lot of their training and so forth. Some are easier than others to use and get your money out of but at the end of the day, they provide a lot of that information to train you on how to invest your money but they don’t tell you what to invest in.

That’s a huge thing because a good, true, legitimate self-directed custodian or administrator and when I go in through my rant of the companies that are out there, I mentioned both custodians and administrators. I’ve got friends and clients in all those different spaces. They will all tell you that they are legally not allowed to give you tax, legal, accounting, business planning, investment direction, financial planning, business advice or general due diligence advice. It’s incumbent on you to do it yourself as a self-directed IRA account holder.

I got news for you. You’re doing it and you just don’t know it. If you got money in an IRA, 401(k), 403(b), 527, SEP or HSA, you’re already directing the investment. You may not know it but you’re already picking the investment. It may be a Certificate of Depression at the local bank. It might be in a Vanguard 500 Index Fund, Fidelity, Schwab or whoever but you’ve done it. You’ve signed the paperwork to get it there. Congratulations. I’ll figure out for sure if that’s where you want it to be.

Is it the 30-year, 20-year or 10-year plan? Those are the ones I see. That’s why I have a W-2 with a 401(k). That’s there and stuff. It’s like, “What’s your retirement plan? Are you retiring in 30 years? Pick this one. In twenty years, pick this one.” That’s the interesting thing. This isn’t a knock about financial planners because I know one of them who is extremely intelligent and then there are others. It’s like any business. There are good lawyers and not-so-good lawyers. There are good financial players and not-so-good ones. Their only question is, “When do you think you’re going to retire? Here, pick this plan.” That’s the only question they asked. I sit there and laugh but it’s true. That’s how some people do it.

I’m going to ramble on that. Let’s put it to you this way. When you retire, every day is going to be Saturday that you don’t have to go to the office. You’re going to have more time on your hands, which means that you’re probably going to need more money. I plan on retiring and having to live on three times what I’m living on while I’m working because every day is going to be Saturday. I’m going to want to travel for fun instead of work. Think about that.

I will have to pay more in taxes unless I’m taking it out of one of my Roth accounts. I got it but that’s what you need to be thinking about. It’s not just, “When do you plan to retire?” Don’t pick some target-date fund. Put some thought into it. I got to tell you. This is a mutually applicable statement. For the last ten years, all you had to do is buy a piece of real estate and breathe. You look like a genius. All you had to do is put money into an index fund, breathe and you look like a genius.

If you think the next few years are going to be like the last few years, you better think. Change is common. I don’t care if it’s a change in tax policy, foreign policy or regarding inflation, which by the way inflation is here. Go take a look at the grocery store, the gas pump or the size of the packages of potato chips on the shelf in the grocery store. You see how the packages are getting smaller and the prices staying the same. That’s inflation. You got to be thinking about this stuff.

 

Anybody that had any money outside of it, sitting in the bank account for the last few years has gone very well, which unfortunately has also led probably to a bigger split in that middle-class. Anybody realistically could have made money in the last years no matter what experience they had. I’m not predicting any huge crash but it goes back to some of the haves and have-nots. People that have sound business practices and principles will do well. The people who are winging it at the moment things start to turn are going to potentially have some struggles. It’s one of those things where you got to be very careful. Jeff, I want to thank you for coming on. I’ve enjoyed talking with you. Your personality fits mine a little bit. I enjoy people like that.

It’s been a good conversation. I’m not going to say what day this is and what time of day it is but it was worth me waking up early to do this. I’ve enjoyed it.

Do you have one last piece of advice to give to people out there? How can people reach out to you and get in touch with you if they have questions or need any type of services that you offer?

Chris, I appreciate that. Two things I’m going to tell you. The number one piece of advice I’m going to give to everybody is to continue to invest in your own education and attend good quality events. If you’re not paying attention to the stuff that Chris puts on Facebook and his group, start paying attention. I’m privileged to be speaking at a couple of industry events in 2021. I’m going to be at a Jim Ingersoll event called Deal Maker. I’m also going to be speaking at NoteExpo in 2021.

The last thing I’m going to tell you is if you like some of the stuff I have to say, maybe you want to start reading my free email newsletter. You get that by going to WatsonInvested.com and sign up for it. It’s a blog. Right at the top of the page, you can sign up for my free email newsletter. The advice in there is worth what you paid for. It’s free.

Thank you, Jeff, for hopping on. I greatly appreciate it. For everyone out there reading, I strongly recommend you to get on Jeff’s site and download that information because it is very useful and educational. Attend these events. You don’t have to go out and spend ridiculous amounts of money on training. There are some good training programs out there but a lot of the information as you’re getting started can be found free. Listen to a lot of these experts. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the show.

Important Links:

• Watson Invested
• Deal Maker
• NoteExpo

About Jeff Watson

Jeff has been a real estate investor since 1993. The Jeffery S. Watson Law Firm primarily deals with established real estate investors, particularly those who are using self-directed retirement accounts.

As a frequent and popular guest speaker, he has become a recognized thought leader and innovator in the field of real estate investing.

From 2010 to the present Jeff has led the Distressed Property Coalition; a Washington DC lobbying effort in bringing about several changes in government regulation of distressed property purchases and re-sales.

The new Standard National Short Sale Policy instituted by FHFA, effective Nov. 1st, 2012 is due in part to the DPC and Jeff’s efforts. This means that Jeff and the DPC just changed the rules; for the better, on how investors and others buy and sell real estate.