All Forum Posts by: Ben Lake

@Andy Mirza Thanks, that makes sense.  Any datasets like that would require much scrubbing to be useful no doubt, but I'm decently handy with Excel so I'm not too worried about that part.  More than anything I suspect that skip tracing the people I'll need to contact will be the hardest part.  Do you have any suggestions on how to do that efficiently and cheaply?  I'm familiar with Spokeo and the like but if there are better resources out there I am all ears.

I like that idea too. In case it isn't obvious, I’m not exactly Mr. been-around-the-block in this space so I’m very open to any available advice from industry vets. Do you have any suggestions for how best to target the demographic you mentioned? One of the reasons my above idea appeals to me is due to the relative ease of contacting target audience, ie they are actively posting ads of their own which makes them easy to find.  I could search sold listings I suppose, but finding ones that date back that far could be challenging and time consuming I think. I have tried using the wayback machine to find older listings but that hasn't panned out so far, although perhaps there are other/better methods of finding these that I’m not aware of. I come from an IT background so it was somewhat second nature for me to try using internet archives.

Thanks for the reply. I'm sure you're right that a lot of sellers wouldn't want to cash out a discount. I was thinking of approaching people who seem to be on the fence about owner carry for fear of having to wait a long time to collect the money and are selling a property that banks would be likely to shy away from - oftentimes such properties wind up going to flippers or other cash buyers at quite a steep discount, and while of course selling the note would result in a discount as well I think there are many cases where the seller would come out ahead doing that vs selling the property to be rehabbed. Just thinking of the classic flipper formula that states that one should be paying no more than 70% of ARV including not only acquisition but rehab costs as well, doing an owner carry and selling the note after 6-12 months even at $0.80 would be a better deal for the seller.

I'm considering a similar strategy for business note prospecting as well.  If anything I expect this would yield more results on the business side considering the current climate, lots of people looking to get out of businesses especially in food service and the like are having to sweeten the deal to a much greater degree these days to attract buyers.  That's not directly related to the subject at hand I know, but just thought I would put it out there.

Sorry if my question was hard to follow.  Basically, I am prospecting for potential note sellers and considering doing the following:

1) Look for property ads where the seller specifically says that they are offering owner carry agreements.

2) Reach out to those sellers and ask them if they would be interested in selling their note if/when they end up going forward with creating one in the process of selling the property, after a seasoning period of course.

I'm wondering if this would be considered improper in any way, to reach out to potential note originators before the note has actually been created.  Perhaps my difficulty in wording this question more concisely would explain why my independent searches on the subject have yielded few to no conclusive answers.

I have a question regarding note seller prospecting that I have not yet found a clear answer to.  Is it a violation of any kind for a note buyer to approach someone listing an asset for sale and offering seller financing, and ask that person if they would be willing to sell the note once it's sufficiently seasoned if they do go the seller finance route?  I've done a fair amount of searching to see if I can find any regulations prohibiting this and so far none have come up, but something in my brain is telling me that I'm probably missing something here.  Of course I'm aware that regulations differ from state to state, but if anyone has any insight on this I would like to hear it.

Longtime lurker of the forums, finally decided to sign up and see if anyone is actually interested in talking to me.  I'm a weird dude with weird ideas that I process best through discussion with others, so feel free to tell me what you really think; I don't get offended easily.  Anyone with thoughts on this is more than welcome to chime in and discuss.

I'm wondering if anyone has explored the possibility of purchasing raw land with the intent of entering a ground lease with a solar developer, particularly in CA, AZ, or NM.  I'm interested in this idea because once the deal is done it's about as passive as income can get.  The leases are typically from 20-30 years, many with options to extend out to 50.  The idea of making an investment in the next 1-3 years that would generate constant income until I'm older than my grandparents are today is intriguing to say the least.  Depending on a variety of factors including latitude, annual sun exposure, land topography, proximity to cities, state and local government incentives, and proximity to existing power transmission infrastructure to name a few, my understanding is that the lease rates can vary quite a bit.  I've heard figures from about $300/acre/year to $2000/acre/year depending on all those things and probably more.

Having said all that, of course I realize this would not be some plug-and-play money printer.  Although I would do as much due diligence as possible before entering into a purchase agreement, this would be at its core an exercise in market speculation.  One possible mitigation strategy that occurred to me would be to draft a purchase agreement with a longer-than-usual inspection period to allow time for solar firms to assess the lot for its viability.  Alternatively, the worst case scenario I see happening with this would be getting stuck with a few acres out in the middle of nowhere, which is far from ideal but also not a lethal mistake in my view.  The lots I'm thinking of carry around $100 of tax liability annually so it while it would be annoying and disappointing to get the deal wrong it would be far from ruinous.

Bonus topic - So far I've really only explored doing this with solar developers, but I'm interested in the idea of ground leases in general.  Perhaps there are better avenues than solar power to capitalize on these that I'm not presently aware of.  If you know of any you'd like to share please do so here.

Anyway, this is just me thinking out loud more than anything at the moment.  I'm curious to know if anyone on here has experience with this sort of thing, and especially so if there's a major liability here that I'm missing or underestimating should I choose to move forward with this train of thought.