Dodd-Frank, Purchase Marketing, and Seller Financing

[Christopher Freeman]

Howdy all,

I'm currently working on a lead generation project to identify homeowners who may be interested in selling their homes using seller financing. The general idea is to pitch seller financing as an opportunity to turn an unwanted house into an investment (ie in a mortgage note secured by the sold property). There will be some digital marketing involved to bring traffic to a website designed to capture the leads.

I know there are regulations governing marketing for investment opportunities, but this seems like a little bit of a grey area. On the one hand, you could make the argument that you are marketing a financial product, which I think might bring it under the purview of the SEC (not 100% sure here). On the other hand, I don't see how this would be any different than posting a bandit sign and then pitching seller financing to all your call-in leads. I'm not looking to sell a reverse mortgage or home equity loan, so I'm not a lender. I'm just looking to buy real estate for rental or flip purposes.

Dodd-Frank creates certain restrictions on the ability to sell real estate using seller financing (which don't apply because in this scenario because non-consumer purchases are exempt), but how does it impact someone's ability to market themselves as a real estate buyer who makes their purchases using custom tailored seller financed offers?

I intend to hire a lawyer before actually executing on this marketing plan, but want to get some thoughts and feedback from this group to help me work expediently when it does come time to start shelling out lawyerly sums.

Best,

Chris Freeman

Co-Owner | Parabola, LLC