All Forum Posts by: Kimberly Banks Fawcett

You're never too old as long as you are willing to learn. You are miles ahead of other new investors because you've bought real estate already. 

Couple of suggestions for you as you get started:

1. Search the BiggerPockets forums (at the very least) for the name of any course or instructor you are planning to pay for. While you could get a few nuggets from a bad teacher, avoid it if you can. So many people skip this step. 

2. Never, ever invest with an educator that you're studying with. They cannot teach you what a "good" deal is and then tell you that their deal is good. Huge conflict of interest. Taking it a step further, it's really not just a matter of not investing with them. Try to find a teacher that realizes the problem and doesn't make exceptions. 

3. Make sure that they multifamily course(s) you pick will focus on 1-4 family investments. They kinda fall in between residential and commercial in a lot of ways so if that is where you want to start, it would be really annoying to start with a course that's only going to cover, say, downtown apartment buildings. 

4. You mentioned that you tried landlording with a previous home. Before you get too much further down the road, spend some time really considering why it was a bad experience and find out if the typical multifamily "solutions" for these headaches will actually help you in the end. You don't want to invest money in your education, buy your first property and then realize that you hate landlording overall rather than just your previous tenants. There are no perfect tenants or property managers, no matter how many people try to convince you that if you were just a "better" landlord that you could easily find them. 

Hope that helps!

 Always happy to help. 

 Hey Mike. Please search BP for his name and his company. Google will probably also bring up other websites about him too. If you want to DM me, I can point you in the right direction. 

@Andy Mirza This was a great post. Thanks for posting the update so quickly!

FWIW, I think his education is great if a) he teaches in a style that works for you (his style is pretty distinct!) and b) if you make sure your plans/processes/communications are reviewed by an attorney so you don't take a short cut that gets you in trouble. 

As for investing with an educator, don't do it. Carson or not. It's a conflict of interest. They can't teach you what a good deal is or what kind of price you should pay and then credibly tell you that their deals are quality and well priced. You don't want to buy deals from them and you don't want to fund deals for them. Just a bad idea. 

Hope that helps!

Originally posted by @Amy Fulbright

Do any of you have recommendations for how to get started in Note Investing? (i.e. the concrete steps) I'm really just interested in the content (and the scripts), not the whole JV thing.

When I first started out, I found it very difficult to put all of the "free" materials together and come up with a cohesive picture of the process from end to end. I needed to be able to ask someone more experienced questions about what came first, what to focus on most, how to decide what type of notes business I wanted to create, all of it. Plus, I knew there was a lot I didn't know -- and probably still wouldn't know when I finally invested because every deal is different. Because of all of that, I chose to invest in my education and selected a class with smart students I could mastermind with outside of the course. Best decision I've ever made.

There are a lot of educators out there to choose from. If you provide more details on what might appeal best to you (eg one educator vs a team, in-person classes or online education, an "in your face/kick you in the ***" type teacher or more of a "here are your tools -- if you have any questions, let me know," maybe even if you want to start with 1sts vs 2nds, etc), I'm sure many of us can give you a little insight into which ones might be best for you.

Just make sure you never invest with an educator as it's a conflict of interest. If they are fine overlooking that HUGE issue, what else are they OK with overlooking?

Hi Eric. Check out Note Investing Academy. (link is the same as the name) 100+ videos on everything you need to know to start, supported by a private Facebook group and monthly members-only webinars. We are three actual investors that still focus on investing but we love to educate the community. And we DO NOT raise funds from our students or sell assets to them as both are conflicts of interest. 

As for "a piece of a note," be careful where you find that. Obviously, don't invest with a "guru" for all the reasons in this post and more. (see conflict of interest above too lol). But if you find an investor that will let you partially fund a deal, make sure you know where the rest of the funding is coming from. Pooling money without being anointed by the SEC is illegal so obviously not the business person you want to do a deal with. They would need to fund the rest of the deal themselves. This is still iffy, depending on how you interpret the definition of a security but it's at least moving in the right direction. If you are allowed to weigh in on decision making, all the better. 

If they've set up an LLC to buy notes and you buy shares of the LLC, that type of pooling funds is legal but it's a bigger operation so watching over his/her shoulder could be more difficult. Make sure to let the person running the deal(s) know that you intend to watch and learn how it's being done. If they aren't expecting that, they are going to get annoyed and you are going to get annoyed and, well, you get the idea. It's always best to manage expectations.

Good luck! 

Not really sure what I can add to this post regarding his legal troubles except to say that overall, the assets are not the problem. The lack of communication, while awful, also is not the problem. It's the management of the assets and OPM.

However, I do want to encourage all to follow @Adam Adams's advice. You should be doing background checks on everyone but when dealing with someone who has worked closely with Scott and continues to do so, check more thoroughly. You hear rumors all the time but you just don't want to believe them. They are heartbreaking because he can be so generous and thoughtful and a hell of a lot of fun. And he really has the potential to light the world on fire (legally). But at some point, there are too many stories to ignore and you are faced with a decision. Try and help him fix the mess (trust me: he won't let you, I tried countless times), ignore it/do nothing or move on. Do you want to give your money to those who choose B or C? 

If anyone you are thinking of investing with tells you that they didn't know, that shouldn't be comforting. That means their due diligence skills aren't very strong.

Also, thank you to @Martin Saenz for your kind words about we ex-Scott students. Please judge our abilities and our integrity individually. Sure, some remain oblivious -- do with them what you will. But others of us are trying to do our best. It is pretty devastating when you realize someone you really trusted is a fraud.

@Brian Bradley Actually, Gary did expressly ask for an ROI calculator. "Does anyone have any recommendations for, or can send over, an ROI calculator I can use to evaluate tapes effectively?" That's where our responses came from. I do understand your point that it's hard to know where to start but I stand by my assertion that starting with someone else's is a very bad idea. 

As @Nathan Turner mentioned, he and I compared our calculators. That is the very best way to get input into how yours is working and what you might be overlooking. Even after you've been doing this a while, you can learn a new twist that might make your process easier. 

New investors need to build relationships in this space. Go to events and talk to other note investors. If you find a like-minded one, sit down and compare calculators. You'll both grow and learn. Bigger Pockets could be a great way to start that kind of relationship but it's probably not the best place to do the hands-on work.

Personally, I won't give my students a calculator but if they take a stab at it first, I'm happy to go over it with them and see what they've left out. They need to think the entire process through first, on their own, to understand how a deal really works and it is not helpful if I let them skip that part. It has nothing to do with not wanting to help others succeed. 

Also, I wholeheartedly disagree that note investors are not open, helpful people. I've been in real estate forever and I continue to be shocked at how open note investors are to sharing ideas and resources. It does get exhausting to be peppered with the same new investor questions over and over though. Maybe you are speaking to the wrong people or somehow approaching them at the wrong time.