All Forum Posts by: Gordon F.

This is all great advice, and I have no illusions about the time it takes to build relationships.  But something isn’t adding up here.  I’m on these email lists of note businesses, and every day, I get emails about these dudes who literally started up a whole five minutes ago closing eleventy billion deals since they started.  I’m like WTF.   There are people on this board in this forum who are as new as I am who are supposedly closing double digit numbers of deals with investors. THAT’s what I’m talking about.  So what’s the real story here, because what I’ve experienced plus what you guys are saying here doesn’t add up to the daily emails I see... Are these people lying?  If not, then how are they doing it so quickly?  Is there some magic pool of investors who hand out their money like it’s candy that I’m missing here??

So where are all of these self-directed IRA investors that supposedly want to fund note deals? Over the last three to four months, I've attended just about every REI event and meet-up under the sun in my city (yes, including the Quest events), even traveling to attend some meet-ups and events in a few other cities, and all of them have been a dead end. If 100 people show up to these things, 1 guy will actually be an account holder with money, while the other 99 people are all looking for money. And that right there is how they've all played out. The "just attend an REI event and get to know people answer" is bunk here. I've exhausted that avenue, and it's a mostly dry well.

I have enough cash to comfortably fund one deal, but not five or six, which is what I hear you need to get started. My family and most people in my network have less money than I do, so asking them obviously isn’t going to work, either.

I keep seeing people say, “Oh, I just closed 10 note deals using investors in the last week,” and I’m like WTF, how...

What's the real answer as to where everyone is finding these SDIRA investors, because REI events and six degrees in your network clearly aren't going to cut it?

Jason this is an awesome post.  Super helpful and informative.  I didn't know any of this; I just knew it was supposedly a hot area.  This provides a lot of color around what I'm hearing.  This is a great story for the city, and it makes that much more attractive to me.  Thank you very much.

Howdy!  I'm down in Houston, and I've been looking at the Boise area pretty hard since a friend moved up there and started glowing about it.   From everything I've heard and seen, it's a quickly growing area.  It sounds like a big part of its growth is attributable to people from California and Colorado who are tired of the paying eleventy billion dollars for a one bedroom house.  I don't know how accurate that is, though...

Well non-performing 2nds wouldn’t be very simple, but as a group overall, you can expect 8% to 15% returns on your notes investing.  

Ryan, that sounds great.  Yea, trying to coordinate schedules with a few others on here who reached out, December is just tough with the holidays.  Everyone's schedule is crunched.  I think I'm going to aim for either January or February, whichever month has more activity, to make a trip out.

Ryan, thank you for the reply.  Meetup is definitely a great resource!  Having said that, I’ve had absolutely horrific results attending events here in Houston on just about every event I’ve tried to attend (e.g., you drive 30 minutes out some place, sit around for thirty minutes, and no one shows).  That just may be how it is here, but based on that experience, I didn’t want to plan a trip that far out of state and get similar results.  But maybe Boise may be different!  I found one Boise based notes group on there, but it doesn’t look like they have anything planned in December, which admittedly is a tough month.  Nonetheless, if you hear of anything, please keep me in mind!

Okay, I'm going to post a cool, little conceptual example here for you guys that was relayed to me by a technical guy and close friend from one of the large funds.

You're the type of person that drives in the fast lane on the highway, speeding by everyone, and honking at people who are going slow.  That's you.  In this example, let's say you're driving 60 mph, while everyone else is driving 10 mph.  You're very happy with the 50 mph difference and just whizzing by everyone.

Now all of a sudden, everyone else speeds up to 60 mph.  Now you're all driving the exact same speed at 60 mph.

It is a mathematical reality that you are now all driving the same speed and you are not going any faster than anyone else.  You cannot change the math on that.  It's a stone cold fact of the universe.  You're all driving the exact same speed.

Now the only question is, do you care?  Well, going back to our first sentence, you're the type of person who likes to drive faster than everyone else, so yes, you care.  You really liked whizzing by everyone at 50 mph faster than they were driving, so to get back to that difference, you increase your speed to 110 mph.  You're now driving 110 mph, while everyone else is driving 60 mph, so you're now back to whizzing by everyone at 50 mph faster.

However, let's say you don't care.  While driving 50 mph faster than everyone was nice, you're really just happy going 60 mph.  You don't need to be driving faster than everyone, as long as you maintain 60 mph. In that case, you do nothing, and you're happy driving the same speed as everyone else.

In some cases -- and this is more for the crowd that listens to the whole "you don't need to calculate the yield on that thang, it's good enough!" -- everyone else may even speed up to 80 mph while you continue to drive at 60 mph.  You don't care.  You don't need to go 80 mph, as 60 mph is good enough, and you're happy with that.

If you understood the above example, then you now conceptually understand why certain concepts (e.g, duration and convexity) will impact your investment.  If you want to know more, I'd encourage you to work through the math to see the types of impacts they have.  The math is arduous, but it's not rocket science.  

Having said that, your personality and investment philosophy will determine whether or not you care if things like convexity and duration impact your investments.  Do they impact your investments?  Yes, it is a mathematical reality.  You cannot change their impact.  The only thing you can do is decide if you care or not.

So going back to one of Tim's points, yes, math impacts your investment, no matter what order of derivative you're talking about.  It's impactful.  Now the only question is, do you care?  Maybe you do, and maybe you don't.

As my friend put it, depending on how far you skew towards mom and pop versus investor will probably determine how much you care, not that either one is better than the other.

Hi everyone, I’m looking to meet face-to-face, shake hands, and network with people in Boise to discuss deals, etc.  I’m from Texas, looking at Boise as one of my top investment targets, and I’m headed up there in December to visit a good friend who just recently moved there.  I’m focused on buying notes, but honestly, I’m just trying to get some good people I’ve met up there as part of my network.  The dates are flexible, and I was hoping to have my trip coincide with any events going on in the area.  Doing a little searching, I didn’t find much.  Are there any December meetups you guys are attending or know about that I can plan to attend?  Absent any known events, are any of you on this forum in seller financing or notes and would be interested in meeting up for lunch or drinks?  I appreciate any help!

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to respond. The book suggestions, YouTube links, and other suggestions are very helpful. Thank you to everyone.

Tim, I had this long response detailed out to get things down to a few conceptual mathematical formulas based on some of your points, but I deleted it.  I decided I'm not posting all that crap.  I seriously doubt anyone would read it lol.  I'll just say you helped bridge some gaps for me.  Thank you!