Notes, NPF and Performing

[Mike Gebhardt]

Greetings.

Forming a JV with a friend to invest, broker(?), and trade notes.

We are former partners in a bond trading background, and understand networking, brokering vs principal transactions, and how to protect our clients. We are not trying to hit a home run this year, our goals are modest for now, and really have little to do with making money early on. Our goal is more to build a business that can sustain us down the road. We have a long term perspective. I kind of laugh at the people looking to generate 20% ROI immediately in notes. I understand its possible, and I also understand the amount of work and time it'll take to build a network of trust.

We're still in due diligence, and we are reading as much as possible. Of course we bought the course, and while enlightening, the course material has got some holes we are looking to fill. That guy, the course teacher - niches in NPN for both mailbox money, and brokering to clients/friends. And also selling some partial cashflows while retaining the paper.

Our beginning questions start with:

Whats goes into deciding whats a good state for US to start dialing for dollars in? Besides thinking that non judicial states might be better than judicial, should we be thinking of something else with respect to choosing an area to work in? Wouldn't there be less competition for sole practitioners like my pal and I (as opposed to institutional buyers) in judicial states? 

If I have this right, we are to 

1. develop a network, of both sellers of paper, and buyers 

2. learn to evaluate and read a tape

3. take down a small note for position to get the lay of the land and our systems in place (servicer, marketing, networking) 

4. find more paper and do it again

Do I have this right? Is this a viable way to approach this from where we are now? 

Of course we have access to the seller of the course, we haven't gotten back to him with this yet, I am soliciting some other opinions here first.  

I am moving back to the US from Costa Rica in a couple weeks, to Colorado. My partner lives in NJ. We both have pretty good potential networks of buyers (and maybe even sellers) in NY, but we aren't sure what criteria we should employ to start networking for sellers. 

Thanks in advance for welcoming us here. 

Mike