Eddie Speed Note School

[Brandon Brock]

I attended a 3 day seminar this weekend promoting noteschool. Noteschool is a mentorship and training program for notes performing and non performing. It seems very expensive starting at 16k depending on the level your at. I understand the value in education and mentorship but this is allot of money and I am wanting to start investing in notes. Has anyone heard anything good or bad about eddie speed and note school.

[Rick H.]

I Agree with Joe Gore.

If you're green, you grow. If you're ripe, you rot.

[Dion DePaoli]

@Brian Winberry what would you say you attribute your successes too specifically about each asset that you have had large gains?

Can you give us an example of the deal?

[Tom Buckley]

Hello Brandon,

My wife and I are mentoring students of Eddie Speed's. We have purchased expensive training from the well know real estate gurus in the past that we never really used. The training we get from Eddie Speed and the Note School staff is the best we have seen. Not only is the training outstanding but Eddie and his team work tirelessly to put his students in a position where they have all the resources available to be successful. He has cultivated relationships with hedge funds to purchase notes, with property preservation companies to assist in the care of the collateral and servicing companies to service the notes and facilitate the work outs. The list goes on but I think you'll get the idea. While the initial fee may seem expensive, I can honestly say that the profit from our first note deal was 144% of the number you mentioned. So the investment is relative. We would have never completed that transaction and work out without Eddie Speed and Note School.

I would advise you to listen to those who know and have mentored with Eddie.

Good luck. By the way I enjoyed meeting you and your wife at the 3 day event in Arlington.

[Dion DePaoli]

Originally posted by @Tom Buckley:
Hello Brandon,
My wife and I are mentoring students of Eddie Speed's. We have purchased expensive training from the well know real estate gurus in the past that we never really used. The training we get from Eddie Speed and the Note School staff is the best we have seen. Not only is the training outstanding but Eddie and his team work tirelessly to put his students in a position where they have all the resources available to be successful. He has cultivated relationships with hedge funds to purchase notes, with property preservation companies to assist in the care of the collateral and servicing companies to service the notes and facilitate the work outs. The list goes on but I think you'll get the idea. While the initial fee may seem expensive, I can honestly say that the profit from our first note deal was 144% of the number you mentioned. So the investment is relative. We would have never completed that transaction and work out without Eddie Speed and Note School.

I would advise you to listen to those who know and have mentored with Eddie.

Good luck. By the way I enjoyed meeting you and your wife at the 3 day event in Arlington.

So let me make sure I understand this...

You are Tom Buckley. You and your wife are also students of this program. Blah, blah, you also made 144% profit on your first note deal. It also seems like you imply that the "fee" is somehow worth it based on this. I suppose we could be lead to believe that relative to the $16k, your profit was enough to justify said fee. If we just use the fee as the baseline, you invested at least $11,200 into a loan and net $16,000 from it. To be clear, that would be a recovery at least around $27,200. So it looks like you trade a second lien. Can you provide some background on the transaction?

It seems you also imply that the connection to the vender services such as property preservation aided in your execution. What was the difference between the prop pres company you used and say, any other one in the market?

Lastly, but certainly not least and likely one of the explanations I look forward to most. So, you met Brandon at a 3 day event..... .... .... in Arlington. Yet the tirade above doesn't really fit as it certainly has more of an introductory than a 'hey remember me?' I mean come on, why did you not advise him (Brandon) at the seminar which was 3 days... ... ... in Arlington?

[Dion DePaoli]

@Brian Winberry - if you are not too busy liking posts from @Tom Buckley , I wouldn't mind hearing more about your deal too still.

The point of the thread is to point out the good and the bad knows about the Eddie Speed program. Now I know you two are a little new to BP and perhaps all that time in studying the ES program has caused you to be a little introverted, but we really like to talk about Notes and deals here.

As such, some folks here can handle most of all the lingo, concepts and strategies making for fun and fantastic discussion. Welcome to the party.

It would be pretty cool if you could tell us about your deal and how it all went down and what you attribute to your success. Since this thread is about ES you can include how that program influenced said success. Feel free to use details.

So what do you guys focus on, first liens or seconds? How about performance and collateral types? How long were you invested? What disposition did you exit with? What barriers did you have to overcome to said disposition? How many times have you duplicated this process?

BTW, if you have any other friends hiding in the closet waiting to sign up on BP, we would love to hear from them too.

[Brian Winberry]

@Dion DePaoli

Hard to put an exact cause to the big gains, other than we are students of our business. We expect to learn from the best there is, mentor-wise, networking wise and have allied ourselves with what we consider masters in the business.

Due Diligence is a very strong suit for me personally and I enjoy it very much.

An example quickly is a note we purchased non performing for 7,200.00 in KC KS...pretty quickly after buying the note we were able to secure the Deed in Lieu of foreclosure from the borrowers, negotiated the state tax liens down to zero, and marketed the property. We got delayed when the borrowers, who thought they were done, filed for Bankruptcy. The trustee was able to negotiate with us and allowed us relief to sell the property because there was not profit being had, they owed around 70K and we were selling for 25K. We sold the property to an investor who seller financed it back out within a week. We had around 8700.00 in hard costs in the deal, a profit of 16300.00 or 187%. All that took 4 months, so annualized that one was 561%

Another was a house in KC MO we bought the note for 3,600.00, the borrower had an unfortunate accident and was tragically killed two years before in an auto accident and he was one of a 4 investor group who had no idea what to do with all their properties and this was next to last of their large portfolio that was foreclosing off. The balance on that note was 60Kish as well. We got deed in lieu from the widow within 10 days of acquiring the note, and a week later sold for cash to another investor in that area who buys and turnkeys property for out of town investors. He bought that house for 12,500.00 cash and put 5K in rent ready, rented it out and resold to his buyer for 24K. It worked out well, got a non performing vacant property back productive in the community, we made money and the investors both made money. That one was hard cost of 4200.00 and sold for 12500.00 profit of 7300.00. Again a high profit margin of 173.8%. Annualized from the 30 days start to finish is 2085%...but really 'you don't need a calculator for that deal'....

A Duplex in Toledo, we got the note for 16K give or take a few dollars, reviewed the collateral file and found that it had deed in lieu already recorded by the borrowers without the banks permission. We called the BPO Realtor up who did the valuation for the note seller and she was able to bring us 3 buyers within a week of the note sale and we went under contract with an investor for 38K. The only cost we had aside from closing costs was a lock change fee of 70.00. 137% straight profit, annualized from the 60 day time frame to do the deal, is 822%.

The last one we closed last week was a really bad note in a very rural spot in Indiana. We bought the note for 960.00 because we had the sellers fade off the 3500.00 in taxes (that turned out to be 4900.00). We found a buyer locally in that little town who paid us 8K for the thing....after taxes, attorney fees for securing the deed in lieu, deed recordings etc, we made about 900.00 profit. Was it worth doing for 900? Well it was a profit of nearly 100%, took 7 months to do so almost 200%...but we met a very neat individual who buys property in obscure places and takes them from 'scrapers' to family homes by working with low income skilled individuals. He has them put sweat equity into homes to live in and he carries them. He is a very connected person and can get all kinds of interesting supplies very cheap and is willing to truck some our way whenever needed to come meet us in person and learn more about what we do....networking is always invaluable....

Again these are very large returns because we are connected to a program that allowed me to fill in the holes in my knowledge easily and quickly. Then using my skills and the newfound understanding in depth of this arena, I took control and made very good buys.

I can go on for several more but it really is just about knowing what you do, being connected to the right group of people and love your work...then it is easy. We don't take advantage of unsuspecting buyers, we revitalize communities with our skills and abilities...we think that is really cool.

We have 'gone it on our own' in many facets of the real estate business over the years, and I can promise it cost something. Education is never free whether or not it is DIY or with a little expeditious help from friends/colleagues/experts/mentors. We are happy because the choices we have made have put us in the path of what we love to do and we can excel at it because we feel supported by a network that no matter the question, someone has the answer. To us that is priceless....

Does that help?

[Tom Buckley]

You seem a little defensive for some reason Dion. My initial post was certainly not a tirade. I was trying to give Brandon a little sense of my experience with Eddie's training as well as an example of how it's worked for us.

I'll answer your questions in reverse order:

I met Brandon briefly at the event in Arlington along with many other attendees. When I'm asked by a potential new student my experience with the program, I give them my opinion. I'm not there to recruit students, so if they don't ask, we talk about other things. I don't recall if Brandon asked my opinion or not but if he did, I'm sure I gave it to him.

As for the property pres company and any other vendors approved by the Note School group, you question was what's the difference between them and all the others? I couldn't tell you, I've only used the ones recommended by Note School. My point was, as a new note investor, I didn't even know such vendors existed at the time. Eddie has those sources in place for the students who chose to use them. However, everyone is free to use whomever they wish--just to be clear.

As for the first deal--you were pretty close. The purchase price was $11,700. With preservation and legal we had about $17,000 all in and sold it for $40,000. It was a NPL 1st.

And in the immortal words of Forrest Gump, "that all I've got to say about this."

[Dion DePaoli]

@Brian Winberry and @Tom Buckley

Thanks for the responses.

So it sounds like you both are playing with low value assets. I didn't see any asset value exceeding $50k. Understandably prices on low value defaulted loans is not very high and indeed some deals can have some good returns.

So, then I suppose the question to that idea, so one of the barriers to low value investing is the amount of liens and additional costs associated with enforcing the security instrument. The cost of collecting and securing one's interest can quickly out run the value of the real property. So how are you identifying the target acquisition you make then? Do you run title on every asset you see or do you have some delimiting factor that you apply to assets, which I suppose are in pools from time to time as that was implied above.

I guess to put some of the good trades into perspective, we should also ask the losers. Have you lost money due to purchasing an asset and have expenses run off?

What in the ES school do you think you have gained that you could not gain from working with say a mentor?

[Dion DePaoli]

@Brian Winberry one other question, going back to a post above, you mentioned you buy "mini-pools" and then scavenge through them. So to be clear where the assets you mentioned above all in a pool that you purchased?
Did you capitalize that pool yourself or is that a school project type thing?

I would be interested to know if you did purchase the pool how many assets were dispositioned and how many were not. Did ES teach you about buying pools as well?

It also seems like the school focuses on defaulted loans, is there no course work on cash flow?

[Account Closed]

I wish I had time I would start a school and teach the new comers all about notes without all the Internet hype and misleading information they are getting now.

Joe Gore

[Dion DePaoli]

Originally posted by @Account Closed:
I wish I had time I would start a school and teach the new comers all about notes without all the Internet hype and misleading information they are getting now.

Joe Gore

I sure hope you could set aside time for us still Joe. Fight the power!

[Account Closed]

Originally posted by @Dion DePaoli:

Originally posted by @Account Closed:
I wish I had time I would start a school and teach the new comers all about notes without all the Internet hype and misleading information they are getting now.

Joe Gore

I sure hope you could set aside time for us still Joe. Fight the power!

I have been ask by many that I should teach the new comers.

Joe Gore

[Bill Kennedy]

Originally posted by @J Scott:

Originally posted by @Brian Winberry:
We have purchased notes for as little as $960.00 and as much as $50K, but for the average they have been around $15-20K each... all of those having made an average return of 150% in an average return time of 3-6 months...

You're saying that you average over 400% annual returns investing in notes?

Sorry, but I've never heard a single note investor (any investor?) ever make that kind of claim with any substantial amount of money and for any substantial amount of time.

To think, I was actually starting to give you the benefit of the doubt...

While I have never met Eddie Speed which was the crux of the original post I have met both Brian and Michelle and I can vouch for their character. They take quite a bit of time away from their business to help other investors and they are honest and straightforward people. They were part of the inspiration for us to start a meetup group in our part of town made up of mostly BP folks.

So if Michelle says they have had great returns on their notes I'm pretty confident they are.

[Brian Winberry]

@Dion DePaoli

We do work almost exclusively in low value band assets under 125K values. Most of my really really high returns are in the lower end of that spectrum.

Is there a delimiting factor I use, not particularly. Initially when we began we decided on things by gut because we were learning. The numbers looked like profitability was available (at least double our money), but we needed to jump in and try to prove our ability. We decided to go with what we knew already, what we were being exposed to in our mentorship program, and gave a $ limit to what we were willing to spend to gain that experience, good, bad or otherwise. We started with a pool of 4 1st Lien NPN for 15K. In fact all of our purchases have been 1st, and we are just now working on obtaining a pool of 2nds to work along side the 1sts and the seller financing that we have done.

We went with assets we had connections with either via geography, or where we had 'boots on the ground' or team members to give us those insights into taxes, title and blight (the big three issues in notes). We run, at the very minimum, prelim title work and avoided anything that even remotely looked like it could be too large of a roadblock.

We lost money once, very very early on by trying to scale by using a component servicer (we had a legal servicer, but this was a workout specialist) who was NOT functioning in our best interest at all. We missed that the property had been in a prior tax sale and subsequently the redemption period ended, and even though we tried to fix it, it was too late and we lost the asset. That is the first and last time so far that we have been in a position to lose. Our least profit other than that loss was one that profit was 100.00 it was in a very bad neighborhood in St Louis and the foreclosure, borrower being deceased, and sewer liens got us there...not easily found or tracked well, and there is an additional one that was a 300.00 ish profit in Salisaw Oklahoma. That profit was eaten up by the valuation of the asset being off, and finding the borrower for DIL was longer than anticipated. The condition of the property was less than we anticipated. Of the many dozens we have done, those are the ones we were short on.

We have assets now in St Louis that we out all in costs are under 25K, and the valuation is 90-95 retail. We have on Courthouse steps this week for 48K and two buyers already if it does not sell that will give us good downpayments and we will carry the note for aprox 60K.

One in Branson Missouri we bought for 21K, foreclosed and sold at the steps in 90 days for 41K, the asset was worth 80K and the investor put 1000.00 in the asset and resold it for 75K about 60 days later. So the value is relevant but only somewhat. And the ability to leave meat on the bone for the next guy that is real and not 'made up' is critical. I think our velocity model is harder to do in the higher price points, at least in the spirit of how we choose to do it.

What we have gained in the NoteSchool that we could not have gained working with an individual mentor? A Community, large network nationwide of people who have been in the business (some for decades), still do the business, and the ability to leverage a very very large and growing 'brain trust' that is unavailable by just finding an individual mentor, or forum. We meet each other face to face, talk weekly...sometimes daily, and grow our abilities and knowledge by learning, conversing, networking, and supporting each other.

We aren't out to beat each other up, we all genuinely want to learn, support and motivate each other to be successful in the business we all chose to be in. And we are happier and more successful for it.

[Jay Hinrichs]

@Brian Winberry

my only question is how could you negotiate the ad valorum tax's to zero ? I don't think that is possible maybe in other states but not here on the west coast

[Brian Winberry]

@Jay Hinrichs

Sorry, I maybe misstated...we negotiated it to cost the asset (house)zero...the taxes still existed, they were released from the property because our lien was so substantial of a loss via our first position there was no equity for them to stay attached to...did that make more sense?

[Jay Hinrichs]

@Brian Winberry

Not really.. and maybe those that are more expert in ad valorum taxs can chime in.. I have never seen an instance were a taxing authority for Real property tax's was able to lower what they were due.. Usually in my experience if the tax's were more than the property was worth they would end up owning the property down the line then the property would be sold off as surplus city owned inventory.. My guys in Indy buy a lot of properties this way. However as I have come to realize what I know west coast wise and what happens all across the country is vastly different.

[Brian Winberry]

@Jay Hinrichs

Sorry, it is late and I'm done for the night so I was too quick...these were NOT REAL Estate taxes, they were an INCOME tax lien for unpaid state income taxes.....

That should clear it up.

[Jay Hinrichs]

yes it does very common to clear out state and federal tax's if there is no discernible equity

[Bob E.]

@Dion DePaoli Hi Dion, there is a performing / cash-flow side of the business too. The 16k investment gets you one side, performing or non performing, there is an additional charge to add the second side.

I too am a note school student and I won't say you can't do this on your own but I will say that it is much easier with a mentor. Realistically, how many people does the average investor know that is competent to mentor in this area and how often does that student have something to offer? How much structure does the mentor have in place for training? If I had tried to do this on my own I would, more then likely, still be spinning my wheels.

So far we have bought 2 performing and 3 NP notes through a variety of sources. One thing that came up outside of note school was an REO that we purchased in Milwaukee. This property was bought through a Vendor that does a lot of business with Note School so I will credit NS with helping us establish that connection. The deal came up on short notice after another buyer was not able to close. The training from Note School gave me the confidence to buy a house in a rougher area of Milwaukee with little notice and close quickly.

I will decline to disclose numbers for now because we have not closed the sale yet but we expect to make 60% in about 4 weeks. I will be happy to give specifics on Friday assuming the close goes as scheduled but I do believe it is bad luck to talk numbers before anything closes.

I won't try and say I can duplicate that every 4 weeks but so far we are happy with Note School and it is making progress in paying for itself.

[Dawn Anastasi]

Originally posted by @Bob Estler:
So far we have bought 2 performing and 3 NP notes through a variety of sources. One thing that came up outside of note school was an REO that we purchased in Milwaukee. This property was bought through a Vendor that does a lot of business with Note School so I will credit NS with helping us establish that connection. The deal came up on short notice after another buyer was not able to close. The training from Note School gave me the confidence to buy a house in a rougher area of Milwaukee with little notice and close quickly.

Can I ask what general area of Milwaukee? Why did you buy notes in Milwaukee?

[Bob E.]

@Dawn Anastasi We have bought all over the midwest based on what we thought was a good deal.

Milwaukee was an REO purchase rather then a note purchase, the hedge fund that held the note wound up completing the FC before they resold the note and they wanted to unload the property, the home is on 21st street. Milwaukee seems to have a strong local investor market so our thought was we could find a buyer quickly and our realtor gave us price range that left us comfortable that we could make a margin on our purchase quickly (We were under contract in just a few days).

We also have NP notes in Jackson MI and Lansing Michigan (both my partner and I are from MI so we were comfortable with the collateral there). We also have an NP note in Indianapolis and a performing note in a small town in Indiana (Ridgeville).

[Dave Van Horn]

Wow, this is one of the longest threads I’ve seen on BP in awhile.

I recently wrote an article on the cost of note education that was posted in PPR’s weekly newsletter, so the original topic kind of hits home for me.

I do agree with @Account Closed  and @Rick H.  that there’s always room to learn more in this business; I’m learning every day.

I also agree that Bigger Pockets articles and forums are a great resource for free information on Notes. However, at this point, the information is still more general and scattered compared to certain focused programs. Which option makes the most sense may depend on the individual’s goals and how much time they can dedicate to learning note investing or setting up and running a note business. Although you can learn notes at your own pace, if you do need to get up-to-speed quickly, as to avoid overpaying on assets or setting up a profitable enterprise, focused programs may get you there faster. 

Although I haven’t taken any of Eddie’s Mentoring programs, I did attend a three day program of his a few years back in Texas, where I met several people that I still do business with today. Over the years, I have been on a few panels with Eddie, and I do believe he’s a stand-up guy.

Also, I know and have done business with several of Eddie’s students, who have come to the marketplace with a solid knowledge base, and many of them have done very well. So, just saying.

[Don Hines]

I guess I have signed up for the thumb screw and bamboo lashing part of another seminar that will try to sell me the mentoring part.

We have just had a guy from Note School spend a lot of time with our local RE club in Little Rock. I was impressed that he was full of info. But, there was no pressure about signing up for a seminar.  I did buy the first course in NP notes and will attend in a couple of months. I was impressed there was no pressure to buy anything. It was more like "Here is what you will learn" and "Here is how much it cost" the last 30 minuets of an 8 hour day. That faired well with me as well as sparked my interest. BTW there was no charge for this day for members of the club.

I should have known there was more cost to be exposed to as far as an education (mentoring). For the people that have been to the three day course; do you think you learned enough to jump out into the note world with a local mentor?

I still have a warm and fuzzy feeling about my investment in my education so far due to the shared experiences and comments by others who have met Eddie Speed in this thread.

Thanks

Don

[Bill Gulley]

  @Brian Winberry:
  
Mind clarifying your Branson deal, you foreclosed and 90 days later sold it on the steps, assuming for more than the note balance was.

You don't need to pay for a network. You might be in a circular chain, I'm also seeing diamonds and circles on the whiteboard the Amway for the note business.

You really think the ES school is better than any mentor in the nation, really? Is that from a marketing standpoint a technical aspect or both?  :)