How Note Investors Can Help Struggling Homeowners
Thursday, March 24
There is a little-known program that has helped almost a quarter-million struggling homeowners stay in their homes. The Hardest Hit Fund was established in 2010 to provide $7.6 billion in targeted aid to 18 states and the District of Columbia. These unlucky 19 were hardest hit by the collapse of ...
Reasons NOT to Buy a Performing Note
Friday, February 26
Many investors are adding performing notes backed by real estate to their investment portfolio. They enjoy the cash flow at a good yield, and they’re happy they don’t have to deal with the property itself. The buyer (not a renter) pays the taxes and insurance and maintains and repairs the house a...
Six Characteristics of a Good Note
Monday, February 08
The six critical factors to be aware of when buying or creating a real estate-backed note include the buyer/borrower, the collateral, the down payment, the terms of the note itself, seasoning and the associated paperwork. We’ll go through these one at a time. The most important of these is the p...
How Do Dropping Foreclosures Affect the Note Market?
Thursday, February 04
The number of active residential foreclosures dropped in 2015 to its level before the Great Recession. This milestone was reached because almost half the foreclosures at the beginning of the year were either completed or returned to performing status. At the start of 2015, there were about 881,0...
Why Would Someone Invest in Real Estate-Backed Notes?
Monday, January 25
Today’s investors have a plethora of choices when it comes to finding a place to put their cash. These can run the gamut from the totally safe, like savings accounts and CDs to the highly speculative, such as penny stocks. In between are tax-free municipal bonds, precious metals, commodities and ...
How Do You Narrow Down a List of Notes?
Tuesday, January 19
A spreadsheet full of information about notes is commonly called a tape. We receive these tapes frequently and they can range in size from just a few to many hundreds. How can we find the needle in the haystack, the few diamonds in the rough when there are so many to look at?What follows is an ex...