Note's Education

[George Dean]

Hi,

I had the fortunate event of having Eddie Speed frequent my portrait studio this weekend.

His son had mentioned, to me, his famimly owned some land on North Texas during our photoshoot. Once I met Eddie, I mentioned land to him and we started talking the RE business - of course. (I had NOT clue 'who' he was at the time.)

BACKGROUND: I have been searching for my path in the RE business that past 6 months. I want a part time, income producing, business to complement my portrait studio business. 

First, I  explored the Mobile Home/Lonnie Scruggs model and decided it wasn't for me. I simply did not want to deal with the asset class/clientele.  I DO thank John Fedro for his fantastic training in this niche. Great guy.

I then found myself at the Land Academy with Steven Butala. I LOVE the concept of dropping direct mail (I do it for my portrait business) to buy DIRT and then owner  financing/creating notes on land. No Tenants or Toilets concept. Paying $500 - $5000 and selling the land with owning financing for 2X-3X the price. SO, I mentioned this to Eddie Speed and we had a healthy insightful discussion. 

I found Eddie to be a man of high integrity with forthright honesty. Eddie spent a good couple hours with me educating me about the possibility of learning the NOTE business. He mentioned, that although he loves the dirt business (and is actively IN the dirt business), he believes there are EASIER ways to create streams of income.

Thus my meeting with Eddie lead me to research the note business. (SIDE NOTE: It seems there is BIG DOLLARS to be made TEACHING the NOTE business. Several gurus in the $15K range for training = WOW.)

I am in the DISCOVERY phase right now. I can't justification the $16K+ investment to 'see if this business is for me'.

It seems that $5K is about the entry point to really sink you teach in the niche.

My Questions:

1. PaperSource seems to offer a reasonably priced introductory course. Can you recommend another "into to notes" course? Attending a three day "workshop" to upsell me to a $15K program doesn't sound like a wise investment AT THIS TIME. 

2. As you can tell by my RE journey, I am interesting in buying a low investment asset (Under $20K for sure ) and selling it with owner financing. This SEEMS POSSIBLE with buying NPN 1st mortgages according to Video #1 on Eddie's website. Do you agree this is possible? My available personal investment funds are less than $100K. I don't want to be STUPID with my money.

3. There are several alarming threads on here about the RISK of the note business - jail time and HUGE fines for lack of compliance. As long as I am using my OWN money, does the risk outlined in several posts remain true? Once again, I don't want to be stupid with my money.

4. It seems to me, based off my limited research, notes are NOT a beginners game. Your thoughts??

Thanks for any assistance you can provide during my discovery phase.

George

[Christopher Winkler]

Is it me, or are notes getting extremely frothy right now due to the 1/2 dozen gurus cranking out hundreds and hundreds of new buyers, who are bidding them up to unprofitable levels? ALL of my bids are getting outbid in the last 3-6 months.

Good luck trying to make money guys when you are paying for the notes as much or more than compared to what you can just outright buy the properties for at a discount. Then you have to factor in the plethor of fees, fines, costs, taxes, assessments, violations, late fees, winterization, insurance, recordings, boarding, document scrubbing, servicing, foreclosure, and cleaning out the crap the former homeowner left behind, not to mention the fines and penalties from cities like Kenosha, WI who hit us up today for grafitti, vacancy over 90 days, and peeling paint on a REO we can't sell due to no jobs in these rust belt cities.

I'll never set foot in Wisconsin again, and that goes for many Northern states. Its so hard to believe so may factories have left this country, mostly due to liberal ideology and the unions that drove them out by making it unprofitable to make products here. Most of the country had factories that made the parts to support the dozens & dozens of former car and dozens of other manufacturers, that paid good wages to people who could afford the American dream, and now they are gone. 

Cities like Flint and Saginaw, Michigan have ZERO chance of ever coming back to anything due to no opportunities. The water dept in Inkster, MI refuses to call us back on a HUGE $10k water bill super lien, so AVOID Inkster, Michigan for any investing, its a waste of your money. What business in their right mind would relocate there and be burdened to death with the problems that drove out the prior businesses in the first place. 

1st lien notes that were selling for $0.20-0.45 of FMV a couple years ago are now going for $0.45-0.70 on the dollar. And like Bill says above, AVOID anything under $20,000, if not $50,000...

Same for 2nds, one fund actually has the cahones to ask for $0.75 of UPB on full equity juniors, over double the costs other suppliers charge.