EP NNA 100 – Finding The Best Note Deals In 2022

NNA 100 | Note Deals

NNA 100 | Note Deals

 

It’s the start of the new year, and we better get cracking! With 2022 in full swing, it’s time to find the best note deals. Kicking off 2022, Scott Carson shares how he is capitalizing on past note buyers to find current product, how to connect with investors and referral sources at your local REIA, Meetup, or BNI.com group, and why it’s important to focus a little bit each day on achieving your long-term success. Learn great tips from Scott on networking and connecting with asset sources, and creating the recipe for success. Tune in for more learning here at Note Night America.

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Finding The Best Note Deals In 2022

Our topic is a little bit more intense from what we discussed. It’s a great way to start things because one of the biggest things I’ve been getting from people are questions. I laugh because somebody sent me a message or a question saying, “How do you find deals, Scott? How are you finding and sourcing deals here in the New Year?” I’m going to be honest with you. It takes marketing. You got to do some work. People aren’t going to fall over where their distress debt is in the air for you to take.

You’ve got to go out, hunt and kill it. You’ve heard the saying, “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” That’s the whole point here of how we teach note investing, not just to feed you for a day. I’m going to be the first one to raise my hand because, in the past, we have gotten very fat and happy off of being spoon-fed deals from different websites and companies that we’re buying in bulk going out.

You’ve got to be a little bit more aggressive in going out and finding deals for your portfolio in 2022, where you had to do it the last few years. Whether you’re looking for performing or nonperforming notes, you got to spend some time marketing and go back to school. I don’t care whether you’ve got $10,000 or $1 million-plus bucks to invest. You’ve got to do some marketing. This is what all is about. If this is your first time in the show, we’re honored to have you.

One of the biggest things people flake on is we love spending time down around friends, family and colleagues. It’s the best thing. A lot of times they’re looking forward to taking a little time off to recharge your batteries. I needed that. I also know that a lot of people plan to get some stuff done over the 2-week break or 3-week break like my sister has got about for a 3-week break working in school districts. I’m taking the whole month of December 2021 off like, “I’m going to get all this stuff done.” We all know what happens with that. Booze and babes for some people or whatever it might be, chill and sleep in.

Plan And Share Your Goals

Hopefully, you took some time and heated some of the things we talked about in October, November 2021 to start planning for this New Year, whether it’s personal, financial or business goals. A lot of times that financial and business goals go hand in hand. What’s your number one business goal for the New Year? Number two is had you written down or shared your goals somewhere? That’s the second big key. Besides having a goal, writing it down and sharing it, you’re 50% more likely to have it happen versus thinking about it, keeping it to yourself.

The third thing is how many hours a week are you planning on putting towards your business or that goal? The reason I bring up personal goals is that could be a little different. I want to work out more. I’m going to get up and take a walk in the morning or work out five times a week. People always have that. “I plan on losing 50 pounds by my birthday.” I want to ask if you’re going to have a business, how many hours are you planning on putting towards that goal? We’re talking 0 to 5. I’m putting an hour on my lunch break and the weekends are for me 5 to 10 hours.

I’m going to spend a couple of hours on Saturday and Sunday and then 30 minutes at lunch each day. 10 to 15, 15 to 20 part-time or you’re looking at 20 plus hours per week. There is no right or wrong answer to this. It’s what you have available in your scheduled life. There is no judgment going on here. Nobody is walking in your shoes. At the beginning of the day or the end of the night, when you’re sitting there brushing your teeth, going to the bathroom or looking in the mirror at night and the morning, when you wake up, you have to look at yourself.

“Did I accomplish what I need to accomplish? Did I get a little bit closer to my end goal?” That should be one thing that runs through your head. At the end of the day, did you do a little bit more? We’re not talking, “Go out.” Most people do today, tomorrow or yesterday is going to the gym. They haven’t been to the gym in 6 months or 6 years. They jump on. They’re going on all gung ho. You’ve seen those weekend warriors at the gym where they kill themselves for one day. They can’t move for 2 or 3 days and then they give up their goal because it’s too hard.

NNA 100 | Note Deals

Note Deals: You got to do some work; people aren’t just going to fall over with their distress debt up in the air for you to take. You’ve got to go out and hunt and kill it.

 

It’s not going to come off all overnight. That’s one of the big things. Success isn’t going to happen overnight. You’ve got to take some time, put some work in and make some things happen. Some people are going to be successful and others aren’t going to lift a finger to even press a button. It’s sad but it’s not surprising why we only see less than 5% of people ever achieve their goals because most people won’t do what they need to do.

Putting Yourself First Is Not Selfish

The thing I don’t get is most of us want things to happen. We’re willing to show up for our friends and family but when it comes to us being the most important is taking care of ourselves. As my buddy and mentor, Greg Reed says, “Don’t go out and try to fill the world’s cup. Fill your cup first and feed the world with the overflow.” Too many people were trying to do too much for other things. You got to take care of yourself first so you’re around for a longer period. If you can accomplish things for yourself, take care of yourself first versus taking care of others because that’s a lot of things.

A lot of people struggle. “I want to take care of everybody else.” They put themselves last. Eventually, you’d burn out, get sick, things happen and you never accomplish what you need to do. Shoot for the stars. I don’t care what your business goal. Maybe it’s cashflow, more deals closed or raising millions of dollars in capital. Maybe you got the million raise or you need deal flow. You got to do something. Put some plans together to help make that happen. You have to look and be honest with yourself. What are you going to do differently in 2021? If you didn’t hit your goals in 2021, doing the same thing is a case of insanity.

Trying to do the same thing and expecting different results, it’s insane people do. You have to go out and change some things. Maybe it’s getting up in the morning, reaching out to people, dropping an email blast out to your database or calling asset managers. You got to do the things that you can do. We are here to help you accomplish or achieve those goals any way we can for you. There is no time like the present and I’m going to start with the number one thing that we heard from people about wanting to focus on a little bit. I’ll get to the deal the side.

I’ve gotten questions over the holidays about funding. I want to bring this up because with it being the first Monday, January 3rd of 2022, there is no time like the present because everybody and their dog out there is thinking about new year’s resolutions. “I want to do something different. I want to work out better. I want to get healthier. I want my investments to get fatter and healthier.” I want them to work more for you. The most important thing you can do with it being the first week of January and the month of January is getting outside of your comfort zone.

A big shout-out to David Staley who last month was like, “Scott, I’m going to a networking meeting. I’m getting outside of my comfort zone.” Kudos to you, David. I’m sure it was very valuable and probably less scary than you put it in your head. Most of the time, we make things worse in our heads. “I got family and friends coming over. Make sure the house is spotless.” You could eat off the shooter if you want it to. In most cases, people don’t care. Everybody has messy houses. They’ve got cats, animals and dogs, whatever it might be.

Build Your Network

The whole idea here is that you got to get out. People all have goals. You got to do some things to make something but people are showing up. People are showing for gyms or to the networking events. Through January and February of 2022, they’re always the busiest time of year for new people coming into a networking event. I don’t care where you’re located. If you’re rural or in towns, you got to get out and network. Even if it’s once a month or one evening a week getting onto your local REIA clubs, Real Estate Investor Association.

Get out to it. That’s where the first spot a lot of people are going to go. You’ll see a lot of new faces if you’re a member there. Connect with people. You got to realize we all started new somewhere and that’s a great place to go. It’s network. If you maybe can’t make it at night, maybe you look at the meetup groups. Meetups are okay. You have some that meet in person, others that are virtual. The pure online and depending on where you’re at in the country, maybe you want to be online. You’re not going to have as much interaction in an online event as you would in in-person.

NNA 100 | Note Deals

Note Deals: Success isn’t going to happen overnight. You’ve got to take some time. You’ve got to put some work in and make things happen.

 

I’m glad to have every one of you here. Trust me on that. I’m always glad about that. You can go to Meetup.com. You can find lunch meanings. You might find some breakfasts but a lot of the meetups are going to be lunch or early afternoons, even sometimes on the weekends. One spot everybody should capitalize on is if you can sneak away for breakfast, lunches at 7:00 or even noon, let’s check out a lot of the BNI groups, the Business Networkers International groups in your city. You go to BNI.com and put in your information, your name, email and that stuff.

If you go to any city and type in the ZIP code where you’re at, they will pull up a list of inaugurates. These are all professional networkers. People pay a couple of hundred dollars a year to be a part of the BNI company. They allow people to join their groups. 1 person in each category, 1 realtor, 1 mortgage broker, 1 insurance agent, 1 roofer and 1 financial advisor but they don’t have a lot of real estate investors at it. Every group is going to be somewhere between probably 10 and the largest group I’ve ever seen was 100 plus members but they had 200 people coming to the meeting once a week because they believe in networking.

If you go on BNI, you’ll see how many members are part of each group somewhere. I was looking in Austin twice a day. One with Larry Hoffman. He is one of our one-on-one coaching students. He has given a close on his first deal. Kudos to you, Larry. It’s a great performance note and got a second one. Get ready to go under contract as well. Performing note bringing in about 20% ROI, kudos to Larry. We looked at BNI in the Cincinnati forum. There were 30 groups. 1 as many 65 people at it. BNI groups are great for helping you develop relationships.

Every person out there is a buyer, a seller or a funding source. You may be saying, “Scott, I got $500 in my checking account. I can’t get me a funding source.” You are because you become a word of mouth. If you are talking to people, you technically can be a referral network for other people out there. I like to go to BNI groups and I did this in 2021. I’ll probably do some of it again in 2022. I’ll look at the largest chapters, target those chapters and go. The beautiful thing is that they will give you a list of those that are members there.

Most of the time it’s a person’s name and their company, website, email and phone number. Someone may be a name, company and phone number. The beautiful thing is I did this and walked away with about 400 local connections that are part of my database. I still get referrals from these folks even though I joined none of the groups because I was telling them I was going around networking. I would highly recommend that you do this to all your chapters. Start in the biggest ones and fill it in. Maybe you might need to have to tell your boss you’re going to market for your company.

The Follow-Up Is Important

That’s fine. Do that. After networking with these folks, what I love a lot is that BNI individuals want to talk and network with you. I’m a big believer that phone and networking with people. What do you do if you can network and get a bunch of cards and contacts? Send them a follow-up email. “It was great meeting you at the BNI group and networking with you.” It’s like you would go into a local REIA club or conference. The biggest thing is 48% of people will never send a follow-up email. It’s probably higher but to the American Marketing Association, 50% of people follow up.

If you follow up with folks from an email from when you met, hopefully, all of you are doing that, put you in the top 50%. That’s why half the time writing things down is a good thing. BNI group members also get credits for filming their dance cards. That means throughout the week, whether it’s a Zoom call, for coffee or a phone call, set up some folks to get the word out of what you’re doing. I’m not saying throw up on them with your information but share a little bit more about your focus and what you’re doing.

If you’ve got a pitch deck, it might be worth talking about what you’re doing a little bit and explaining it then for him. “I’m an active real estate investor and I buy a performing debt. Do you know if anybody’s got a note for sale or looking to sell notes? I’d love to talk with them.” Take these contacts, add them to your database, drip market and start connecting. Connect with them on LinkedIn. Start getting the word out. Prime in that pump of the referral network for you because everybody is interested in getting more out of their investments and/or opportunities.

NNA 100 | Note Deals

Note Deals: If you’re tired of sending emails out, then do some old-fashioned legwork. Reach out to people. Don’t drop a letter. Pick up the phone and call, and find them on Facebook.

 

What you want is always one of the most important quarters to do because that’s when people take a look at their insurance and retirement accounts. Especially with the great resignation, people are moving jobs and careers. Why not help them put their money into a self-directed IRA? The most important thing is you’re building your local network and local team. It comes in handy.

Get Your Database Ready

That’s the one thing with me doing so much stuff in the last years outside of Austin. I don’t have a local network. That’s why I went out to BNI, started doing it to build relationships here locally and continue to do that. That’s one of the most important things you can do. Why? You need to build funding and start on the right foot. Whether you’re finding capital or deals, it all starts with marketing. You got to have a database to reach out to people. This is one of the great things. Get the ball rolling. “It was great to meet you. I’m an active real estate investor in the area. I’m going to the local REIA club. Here’s what I’m doing. Here’s the deal that I’m working on or I’m looking for this.”

You got to get the word out because if you’re just shouting out into the void with no email or marketing system, you’re wasting your breath and probably should get a job that pays for your career. If you’re looking for a deal flow and I know a lot of people are, “I’m looking for deals,” I want to share with you what I’ve seen. It’s working that I want to reiterate it to you but you need to do this because a lot of us have gotten fat and happy over the last years. There have been companies out there that will buy notes and then sell notes off.

As pricing has gotten higher and properties are going up, those companies have faded away because they’ve worked through their portfolio and sold stuff off. They don’t want to sell stuff at a big discount because they don’t have to. When I see performing notes going at $0.90 on a dollar, I chuckle about that. What did we do? We went to the drum board. We went in, started contacting and pulling up old lists that we had gotten from anybody. Any time I get a spreadsheet in, a tape or a listing of sell lists of notes, I save it to who I got it from and save the file folders.

I started going back into stuff that was at least 2 years old, a minimum of 12 months. I started looking at who had bought those notes. How do you find out who bought a note, Scott? What gets filed at the county? That’s a sign on a mortgage. It’s filed in the county for a note. It’s a beat address. If it’s a contract for deed, if a property is bought and sold, there is a deep ball but in a contract for deed is a deed. Quitclaim deed that’s filed or is there’s a signed mortgage. I went out and started tracking who had bought these notes.

Some people, it was still the same seller, which is a good thing because if they’re trying to sell it years ago, they probably aren’t motivated to sell it. If it’s still nonperforming or performing, it’s a different thing. I started tracking and finding those who were buyers. I’d go to the county clerk recording office. One of the easiest things you can do and this is where I recommend you start doing to make it a little simple for it. I’m going to prime the pump for you on who to search for.

If you go to some of the largest counties out there, you’re going to want to search for a few companies that have been selling notes. The biggest buyer of some distressed debt over the last couple of years was a company called Harbour Portfolio. They bought a lot of contracts for deeds. You would go to the county clerk, look for a deed search and include Harbour Portfolios and company. They had a whole lot of Harbour fund one, Harbour workout fund. I would go back years ago.

The idea here is we’re not targeting the specific asset. Harbour’s not in business anymore but we’re looking for the people they sold notes to because we have found overwhelmingly a lot of people bought notes and they weren’t serious about it because they still got a couple of assets available. We’ve seen that with some different listing websites like Paperstac. People bought a couple of notes that they’re serious about but they still got another trying to sell.

NNA 100 | Note Deals

Note Deals: Don’t burn bridges when it comes to your asset sources.

 

When we see an address, we go out and track down the person or entity, whether it’s a note looking for an assignment or it’s a contract for deed looking for the actual bid and contacting them directly. You can do the same thing besides Harbour Portfolio. You can look for Rocktop Partners, granted loan solutions around a while back colonial funding, Eddie Speed. I don’t think he has bought a new portfolio for a while. I could be wrong but we find out who he buys his stuff from and reached out to them directly. You can look at Revolve Capital.

They’ve had some stuff for sale that used to be granted stuff. Revolve used to be granted back in the day. There are some names for you to look for. You’re looking at Harbour and Rocktop. You can go on there and see the whole list in some of the bigger counties. We’ll discuss the states probably you need to look at but you can see that Harbour Portfolio sold it to inverse asset fund or to WMD or LHG investors, whatever it might be. You can see if they sold it for their investors like you and me. I have found that all investors who have bought notes are a buyer and sellers.

They have stuff on their portfolio, maybe looking to get rid of nonperforming or performing stuff that was once nonperforming. Everybody’s looking to buy and sell. We have found some great deals. One thing that we’re hanging our hat on, besides them buying deals from, if you make some good rapport, they can potentially be funding sources for your new deals or you can find out they buy nonperforming. They’re looking for performing or they’ve got performing to sell that they bought was nonperforming, whatever it might be. You got to reach out to them.

The Secret To Success

“Scott, what do I say to them? The records don’t have their email address.” You got to use a little tool called Google to go find them. Maybe go to LinkedIn and look for somebody at that entity or LLC name is popping up. You got to market. Google is almost a universal answer for everything. What’s the secret to success, secret of the universe 42, for those of you that are plans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? I would start at six states that had the most amount of distress debt.

You can look in your county if you want to but it’s more desirable to go to the bigger counties, finding the entities that are buying those candidates because they’re buying in a variety of other states and counties out there too. Look in Ohio. Pick up the biggest counties like Hamilton, Franklin, Cuyahoga, Lucas County, Columbus, Cleveland, Toledo and Cincinnati. Look at those four counties. You go to Michigan, look in the biggest counties in Michigan. Michigan might charge you to search but it’s well worth it because if people won’t pay $1 to search, that’s going to be a big barrier for a lot of people.

I know people are lazy. If you do pay for a search in that, you may find a lot of great deals. There are a lot of people that have bought up so that others won’t find it. Look in Indiana and Illinois. You can look in Cork County. I would look at DuPage County, probably be better stuff for you. North Carolina, South Carolina and God’s waiting room of Florida. How many of you know that we look in Orlando County quite a bit? I’ve done that over the years. I found a couple of sources. Orange County, Florida is not a new county that you know that we like. Orlando is going to go through a bit of regrowth over the next 12 to 24 months.

Taking A Deep Dive

We know it’s been hit hard with COVID but it’s getting back in the swing of things and more conventions are coming back and stuff like that. If you’re looking to get an idea, start in these six and go from there. If Missouri is one of your top five states, go to Missouri. Look Kansas City, Kansas or St. Louis, Missouri. It’s not a bad state either. Every county is going to have a little bit of a different way to search. If something pops up differently, don’t start spasm. Work with it. Play a little bit with the websites. I like to look at assignment mortgages. Especially in areas that have values above $100,000, most of the time, you’re going to have a better search for assignment mortgages.

They’re not going to be a lot of contracts for deeds. Contracts for deeds are usually on state property below $100,000. That’s why Michigan, Ohio and Indiana is good spot for Rocktop and Harbour. If I’m going to go to Orange County and those areas, I’m going to look for assignments. There’s going to be a lot. I’m going to go back to 2014. We’re going to go on 06-01-2014. We’ll go uncheck the box and do a specific for assignments, not all document types because we’re not doing any search. We’re looking for assignments that were filed in these 6 months or 5 months if you think about it. Once it pops up, there’s a magical list. It shows grantors or grantees.

NNA 100 | Note Deals

Note Deals: One contact can lead to 30, 60, 90, a hundred other deals if you just do the work.

 

If you don’t know what grantor or grantee mortgage or mortgagee means, Google it. In this case, the grantor is the people taking on the debt, the borrowers. The grantee is the banks that are lending the things. Condor Capital Corporation still sells the note so I can look at Condor in those areas and see that they bought this note that was originally from Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corporation. This note was originated back in 2008. The address is 17053 Arrowhead Boulevard, Winter Garden Fort. Who knows if Condor has or not? They may or may not but it’s not a bank like Wells Fargo, Chase or Bank of America. It’s a different company or if I see an LLC pop up there that tells me it’s a smaller thing.

We’re looking for a list like this. What’s great is Orange County showed 5,657 items for 5 months. This somewhere goes between 10,000 and 15,000 assignments depending on what’s going on. I would look at smaller banks like First Federal bank of Florida. I might look at them, call them Axiom Bank, Condor Capital. Glick, LLC bought a note at Orlando Bank with one associate. Iberia Bank, I’ve bought from them. PennyMac loan services, another buyer of notes. There you go. You can do a printable version of this. Print this out as a PDF and start checking boxes off.

I’m going to go to Condor Capital Corporation. Reach out to Dustin and see if they’ve got anything available. It’s that simple. You got to put a little bit of work into it. Do these simple things because all this stuff I’ve gone through has cost you a little bit of time. I do this regularly. I’ve done these hundreds of thousands of times but it’s just that. What do we say? “I saw that you bought some notes from such. I want to know if you had anything on your books you’re looking at getting rid of.” Disney Vacation Developments maybe bought a note from somebody.

Realtor Mortgage Finance, you might reach out to them. Emerson, Bradford, Aqua Maxine pension plan. Bradford must have been a private investor who bought a note. Go with the grantees. Do go to grantors. Keep it simple. Go to one side. It’s that easy. “Scott, that looks easy but you still got to reach out and talk to people.” You still got to do some work. What would I do? This is what I would do and what we have done. I would take them a whole list, copy, paste it over, do the five months and then do the other five months from June 2nd through October 31st. Put it in a spreadsheet and then send it to a VA for them to pull some information. What am I looking for information more? The LLC information.

If you want to go out and reach out to banks, I agree, banks are still something you still be drip marketing out there but a lot of people are like, “Banks don’t have anything. I’m tired of sending emails out.” Do some old fashioned legwork. Reach out to them. Don’t drop a letter. Pick up the phone and call. Find them on Facebook. That’s what it comes down to. Doing that and reaching out. Put a list together. In these 5 months, there are 5,600 lines there. You should be able to find 10 to 100 to maybe even 1,000 potential leads for you.

Overcoming The Fear Factor

Our whole society, news and the government are trying to have a worldwide game of Fear Factor. We all know you are smart and fear is not a factor for you. Go out, reach out to people, talk to people and find them online. You are all capable of doing that. It’s a matter of taking the time. Whether it’s 5, 10 or 20 hours a week, you can knock down that list a little bit. If you like one county, focus on one county. The whole point thing is those people that we picked up are not like Condor or Orlando. They’re all across the country. 1 contact can lead to 30 to 100 other deals if you do the work.

I don’t want you to be afraid of doing the work to make things happen. This is not that difficult. It’s one of the easiest things you can do. We do have our one-day weekend class coming up but we’re going to do a big deep dive in the first workshop of 2022. It’s an opportunity for you. Jump in, spend a little bit of time, learn some more stuff and get signed up for that. A quick reminder, if you’re not a partner WCN membership, it might be something to think about for you. For $97 a month, it gets you access to our classes, our note weekends and three-day virtual note buying workshops.

You got a special base camp group with other people going through the WCN membership, monthly coaching call with me. Monday coaching calls with us starting the first year and a whole variety of things, access to all of our training and stuff like that. You can go to NoteUmbrella.com and get signed up for that. It’s pretty much the biggest bang for the buckets and all you can eat buffet of note goodness. Many of you are like, “I don’t need to eat any more for the holidays.” I get it. You probably need to feed your mind and stuff.

It’s one of the best ways to feed your mind with investing knowledge, especially if notes and nonperforming notes is what you’re looking for. More performing notes as well, we like working with people out there. Take the opportunity. Get signed up for that at NoteUmbrella.com. I wanted to keep this first one short and sweet for you. I’m excited about what we’re going to be covering. I’ve outlined the first eight weeks of the show. In the first two months of 2020, we’ll be covering here stuff to help you make some adjustments in your note education and note focus of how you market and find deals to help you take advantage.

There is not anybody teaching you out there how to go find these deals as we do. We want to make sure and keep you up to date with what’s working and what’s not working in the market and things that you can spend some time on. If you’ve got five hours a week, you can spend some time on here, whether it’s late at night, early in the morning, on the weekends or your laptop while you’re watching replays of Netflix, Amazon or Disney+ or whatever streaming service you have out there. Go out and take some action. Trust me, a little bit goes a long way. That’s all I’ve got for you on the show. Once you get signed up at NoteUmbrella.com for the WC membership, you’ll have a ticket to the 1-day class along with a ticket to the 3-day class. We’ll see you all at the top.

 

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