We are down to the last month of the decade, and so much has changed in the notes industry. What this calls for is a reconsidering of our old ways of finding notes, because you’re only on top of the game if you are constantly on the lookout for the changes ahead. Looking forward, Scott Carson braces us for what is coming by discussing the ten different ways to find note deals in 2020. Forget about the old sources of notes. They are overfished and overpriced anyway. Join Scott in this episode and take advantage of the new sources he shares.

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Ten New Sources For Note Deals In 2020

I’m excited to be here. If you’re reading this, we’re in the final month of a decade. If you think back to what has happened and transpired over the last couple of years, it’s been an interesting few years, few days with everything happening in the note business in this last decade. If you think back to what we were doing to find sources back a decade ago, it was the start of the Wild West out there. We’re in the middle of a major mortgage meltdown, banks closing, a lot of distressed debt at the peak. Years ago, we had fifteen million homeowners underwater. They owed more on their house and it was worth foreclosures at all-time highs.

Over the last couple of years, it changed. We still see about two million underwater. One in ten borrowers out there is at least a month behind on their mortgage payment. We see record to default levels and auto debt, student loan, credit card, medical debt. The mortgage debt is low, coming back to a normal amount. It’s bracing for the impact of when others can’t pay their other bills. People are paying their mortgage debt, their mortgage payments, but they’re not paying the debt on the other stuff too. It’s a weird balance of sources or of things happening in the market out there. Years ago, so much was not around compared to now. Years ago, we hadn’t LinkedIn and Facebook.

We had the LaneGuide.com. You had your phone and you’re dialling for dollars. A lot of things did not exist like they do now. What I want to do now is discuss ten different ways to find note deals in 2020. I did this webinar also on the Note Night in America. This is going to be a little shorter version. If you’re reading this, you’ll want to grab a pen and paper and take some notes if you can or go check out the video recording at our YouTube channel, We Close Notes or check out the replay on YouTube if you can. I’m going to go through ten sources of ways that you can find deals and give you an opportunity to partake in something if you guys are interested and our audiences out there that follow through on a regular basis.

Thank you as always for reading. Thank you for being active and asking questions and reaching out for more information as well. That’s one of the beautiful things that we love about our audience members. If you guys are reading and taking action and doing things, which is what we love and why we have this whole podcast. I wanted to dive into these ten new ways to find notes in 2020. Things have changed quite a bit until the last decade. There are a lot of new places to find deals. A lot of people are still trying to milk the old sources. I tell people all the time, forget about the old sources. People know the low hanging fruit and so they’re overfished and overpriced assets for the most part. It’s the bottom of the barrel.

Everybody knows about the Condor or Eddie Speed’s Colonial or Paperstac.com or Granite Loan Solutions, whatever name, they’re going by now. You’ve no direct source for content for deeds or even Notes Direct with Tracy Z Rewey. Those deals are way overpriced. There is no fancy in the sources. I just think they’re overpriced. They realize that they can offer a price because most people are inherently lazy. Most people aren’t going to do the work that they need to do to find new sources. They’re going to overbid because they know at some point, somebody is going to buy that. They’re going to leave minimal profits, minimal margins there for you. It only makes sense to buy from those sources these days, if you’re using your own funds. If you’re using other people’s money, you’ve got to go out and market and prospect about doing things.

First and foremost, if you’re complaining about lack of deal flow, the problem is not lack of deal flow. The problem is you aren’t doing the things you need to be doing. You need to be out constantly marketing. If you look at mortgage brokers, real estate agents, all sorts of other people in the industry, they’re going up constantly marketing. That’s why they go to expos. That’s why you have vendors that go out looking for new deals. They’re not doing business as normal. If you’ve been doing business as normal for the last couple of years because you had sources that were delivering stuff to a regular basis that made sense, some people will complain all about the increase in note investors out there. Those people that are complaining are lazy and, unfortunately, not going out and looking for new sources. New sources are not that hard to find. If you’re not doing any marketing, you’re not finding new deals. If you’re doing some new marketing, that will equate to new deals if you do the right things.

If you’re doing things on a regular basis, not doing the same old same old. You can build a note business with a hundred sources or less. One of the things when I started years ago, over a decade ago, is I’ve put a challenge to myself in the first year to be direct to 100 asset managers. Within the manager for the first 90 days, I was direct to 100 asset managers. I had to adjust my balance. For most people, no business is a side hobby, a side hustle, you’re doing it 10 to 15 hours a week on your part-time basis and that’s okay, but you still need a market on a regular basis.

Don’t rely on those names that we talked about. You have to realize that not every source is going to have deals every month out there. They’re not going to do that for the most part. It’s going to ebb and flow, especially you go more and more direct. You may only sell once a quarter, some may only sell once a year. That’s why we talk about there being a magic happen when you’ve got 100 sources that are sending you stuff. Some will send it to you monthly, some will send it quarterly, some will do once a year. The more that you prospect, the sweeter the deals are going to be. By sweeter, it’s more direct to the bank. You’re going to have less ugly assets because they know the relationship with the borrower, they’re not having seen you around vacant for a long time.

There’s something that they’re moving and they’re motivated to get off their books versus something that’s been sitting around for a while, where somebody bought in bulk. One thousand assets in the bottom 250 and are trying to move, but they’ve already made their profits and aren’t going from there. If you have big goals in 2020, you’ll need big sources. That’s why we say 100 sources. I talked to people all the time, students, and investors. I’ll give an example. I asked an investor, “With the 75 deals that you’ve closed this year, how many sources did you have?” He’s like, “The 22 of the 75 came from one source. The others have all come from one off or two off for me prospecting for investors or other buyers or other sellers.” That’s fine.

Short Sales

There’s nothing wrong with buying one deal here, one deal there. It happens. We’ve done a lot of that over the last decade. Buying ten assets from one investor and we never bought anything else from him again. Not that there was a bad relationship, it’s just that they didn’t have anything else they have were open to move at that time. That’s the thing to keep in mind. You’ll need big sources, but the thing is if you stick with this, it’s still follow-up and do some of the things that we teach. You’ll be the only person or the only company that the seller reaches out to on a regular basis because you’ve gone and done some amazing things. The number ten on our list from 10 to 1, new sources in 2020.

It’s an old source from the oldest sources out there that we’ve had, but it’s started to make an impact and increase across the country. That’s the number we’re talking about, short sales. Short sales are on the rise across the country. We may not see many of them here in Austin, Texas, but we do see them in Texas. We’ve seen an increase in the DFW markets, in the Houston markets, especially that number is starting to creep above 200 plus short sale listings on a regular basis. Distress sales, you’re going to see this on a regular basis. People have gotten into houses and they owed more on their house than it’s worth when they can afford it. You’re going to start seeing those and some of the new build areas where people are budget mindset.

The beautiful thing about short sales, not that you want to see beauty in that aspect of borrowers being in trouble. The borrowers are motivated and ready to walk with zero money. They want to get out of it. They want to get sold. They want to get moved on. We’re not saying you go out and make offers on twenty short sale listings. That’s not what we’re talking about. Many of the short sales may already have a cash buyer in place who’s ready to close as long as the bank is willing to take a loss. That’s where you come in as a note investor. The beautiful thing about a short sale is there’s a lot of stuff that you get with a short sale that you don’t get in a traditional distressed note sale. A lot of times, you’re not going into your access on a spreadsheet of assets.

With a short sale, it’s got a listing agent on the MLS and they often will have interior views or interior access for you to take a look at it. You can see what it looks like. What we’d like to do is we’ve reached out to short sale agents. We like to try to purchase the notes on those listed properties with potential cash offer to this place by buying the note at a discount below the listing price. We then turned around and then approved the short sale. If we’d say a borrower has $200,000, the bank is willing to negotiate the $175,000, we can buy that note at $150,000, we’ll settle and make a $25,000 profit if we can. That’s where short sales are great. It’s a little faster time frame than a year to foreclose.

It could be 30, 60, 90 days where you buy the note, takeover the asset, approve the short sale, the buyer closes and you move on. We’ve done this multiple times. We approve short sales on a regular basis. What we do when our borrowers want to sell as a short sale. The thing to keep in mind is this, it takes some work. You’re not going to reach out to chase Bank of America and stuff like that. You’ve got to be particular about what you do. We won a property here in Austin, the bank borrowed $220,000 and it may have been worth $100,000. It’s been in the market for a few years. It needed some work. We were able to buy the note at $75,000. There was a cash offering that we ended up netting.

 

It’s a catch over at $150,000 that was approved. We ended up netting right $60,000 in a 45-day period which is a pretty good profit margin when you buy it at $75,000 selling it at $69,000 and start to finish, the deal is done in less than 90 days. What you want to do is contact the local short-sale agents. They’re doing this on a regular basis, just call them up and tell them what you do. It’s going to be hit or miss. If you’ve got access to MLS, great. Jump on there and do a list. Pull yourself for short sales or third party approval required. Most of them, the multiple listing services, in the country now have a button or classification for short sale distressed asset or you can do keyword search, like third party approval or bank approval required out there.

What you do is contact the current bank on title or when you go to click on, oftentimes on the MLS, there will be a button that links to the county records on a listing that will show you who the current bank is. If you recognize the bank, great, it’s a bigger bank and Bank of America, Chase, Citibank and you don’t want to waste your time. It’s a small regional bank. That’s where the most valuable is going to come into. The thing is you’re not using that address as your final deal. You’re trying to take that down. You have to realize. You’re using the short sale and if you do get it approved, great. You’re using this address as a warm lead into the asset manager of the bank.

I’m calling about 9016 Collegeville Drive is supposed to go to foreclosure in a few months. Listen in short sale. I want to talk about buying the note. The whole deal is 9016 Collegeville is not the address you’re excited about. You’re excited about what else they might have on their banks. Oftentimes, especially depending on where it’s located, the bank may not take a discount, especially if they’re all the way either getting close to the foreclosure auction or it’s been a tedious process. Sometimes they give a sale, sometimes you won’t. It’s a number of game. That’s the beautiful thing. You normally knew the asset manager and then asks, “Are there any other notes that you’d be willing to sell? They don’t have to be in Austin, they don’t have to be in Texas.” That’s where you get the list of NPNs looking to move.

It’s who handles that to the bank or they move to other areas and then you have a pipeline there that you can rinse and repeat on a regular basis. That also gives you the opportunity. If you’re seeing a list from this bank of potential short sales, of reaching out to the listing agents on those properties. If they are listed in the list and trying to find out if their cash offers in place that there are true offers that are getting ready to close on, then you can see it with yourself. It turned to a nice profit margin between what you bought the note for and what the final short sale number is. Short sale has been great. Something in range and repeat, it takes a little bit of stuff on the front end, but it’s like anything else.

Condos In Safe Harbor States

The nice thing is having a warm lead with an address versus you saying, “What else do you have on your notes or you aren’t looking to sell?” Number nine, this is something we made a lot of money with a decade ago. This was condos in the safe Harbor States. What do I mean by that? Florida, Colorado, Nevada are safe Harbor States where the condo associations when a loan is not being paid, the borrower is not paying the condo association fees. The condo often racks up big bills. If you’re buying the note on a condo and you foreclosed, you’re only required to pay a certain percentage of the condo association fees. In Florida, it’s one year of HOA fees or 1% of the original sales price. In Colorado, it’s six months. In Nevada, it’s one year. You want to double-check the state by state level.

The nice thing is that’s a substantial discount compared to the one who’s buying it, the asset as an REO. What I like to do is when I get a condo in Florida, let’s say it’s a unit on a spreadsheet or something I’ve looked at in the past. I’ll go back and to the county of records and A, either type in the address without the unit number and see the owners and see if the condo association pops as an owner. B, I’ll type the management company and if I can or the HOA names in the county to see if they owned up other things. They may own condos at more than one location, more than one address. Especially in the larger condo complex is what may have 2, 3, 4, 5 addresses.

That’s what a nice thing is. I’m looking to ones that they’ve foreclosed subject to the first lien and taking the property back. When I do, I contact the condo association and management. I’ll say, “I see that you’re taking this condo back subject to the first lien. Do you want to double check and make sure they’re a junior lien foreclosing on the assets, which leaves the first lien in place?” They might have not done a quiet title action. We’ll get that in a section. I’ve taken these condos back, they’ve put people on it, they’re getting a rent paid on it, and they’re collecting the management fees out of the rent in order to stay liquid. A lot of condos went bankrupt a decade ago when all of these condos went vacant and they couldn’t pay the management and the upgrade fees and the special assessments guy.

When you find a condo association that’s taken 1, 2, or 3 of these units back, they’re often willing to sell the units for percentage of either what is owed or a percentage below of what the actual asset is worth. They’re often rendered in good condition. You want to use that information. Who was the first lien holder? The HOA is redone foreclose subject to the first lien so they’ve already gotten the borrower out, they’ve got their own people in there. This is a great thing to reach out to the bank to see who the bank is and if they’d be willing to sell the note at a substantial discount. If it’s a Bank of America, Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, you may not buy that note. You want to look to see if they filed any legal, filed to foreclose or anything like that.

If they haven’t then you can buy it off of the note by that position manager way to a substantial discount or percentage of what’s owed and take the condo over as a cashflowing asset and you have a rent area in place. You’ve got a cashflow deal going in, not paying on the first, I would file a quiet title action for ownership of the asset. This is worked out in our favor quite a bit. Worst case, you’ve had a rental for 12 to 24 months because it didn’t take a while to do that, especially if you can drag it out respectfully. This can be a great way to find some deals and they expect to see a lot more of this in the higher-priced assets in Florida as the condo market is a returning south. Condos are first to go and they’re are first to come back because often they get sold off for discount.

You can buy, you can purchase a list of homeowner associations and condo associations in Florida. There will be a list of names, list of addresses, email addresses. Sometimes we’ve bought the list and then an email blast out and had the attorneys contact us. You can check the condo associations on the appraisal districts. If they own condo, you’ve got to have the name of the condo association. It makes it difficult and in some cases, you can’t. If you do find one, like we did a search in Orange County in Orlando and we found four deals immediately that we reached out to, we’re in negotiations back and forth. That’s exciting on our end by doing this. It will either be an asset acquisition, a note purchase or cashflow play, which is a long-term play, but that’s okay.

Servicing Companies’ Business Development

It’s a great way to find deals that nobody else is looking for. The substantial discounts are what we’re looking for. We’ve done this multiple times in Orlando. We’ve done this multiple times in Homestead, Florida, Miami. We’ve done this a couple of times in Cape Coral, Tampa Bay area where we see the condo market boom and that’s where the places we’re targeting on a regular basis. If you don’t like Florida then check out Las Vegas, it is a similar thing. You could also do something very similar with Timeshares. If you’re a big Timeshare cashflow fan, check that out as well. Number eight is the servicing companies’ business development side of things. I’ve talked about this briefly before every servicing company has business development people.

Sometimes it’s the onboarding. It depends on how big the servicing company is. Normal services that service smaller investors often will have the same onboarding person and maybe the same person that owns the service income that goes out. I would contact servicing companies and ask to speak to business development people. Those are the people that are in charge of going and getting new business. They’re going to know too that their clients are looking to move assets off. They are a performing investor. They’ve got to know the performing assets they want to move off their books that will often reach out to the business development guys or girls to do that. The thing that I realized is the servicing companies representing mortgage companies and note investors like you and me after, some big companies, some smaller companies.

I’ll give an example. There are companies that only want you to have at least 100 assets or more before they’ll deal with again. If they’ve got investors that have fallen below 100 assets, it might be an opportunity for you to pick up a portfolio and transfer it off or added to note. A big thing, they know who is looking to sell. They do want to retain the servicing. They don’t want to give you a lead on somebody who’s going to pull business away from you because they’re getting paid a percentage monthly and the servicing cost. They want to retain services. If you’re talking to them, it’s important to bring that up. You guys are retained servicing if possible.

This is especially effective if you’re calling performing or non-judicial servicers. There are more superstars that focus on non-judicial states. They don’t want to deal with judicial states. They don’t want to handle the longer foreclosure processes. This is effective because there are a lot of those out there. You can jump on LinkedIn and leverage LinkedIn by just typing in, servicing in loan servicing companies and pulling up a list of those and reaching out to them one at a time. Reach them for the business development size. If you’ve taken our workshop, you can also jump on the Texas Savings and Mortgage Lending website here in the Lone Star State and download the list of companies that are licensed to do business here in Texas. Among that list, you’ll find 268 servicers. They’re not all here in Texas, it’s a big chunk. Most of them are outside of Texas, but their lending or servicing loans are here in Texas and then you’d be licensed.

 

Non-Prime Lenders

Number seven is a big thing. It’s going to lead the way here is the non-prime lenders. Number seven, sub-prime lenders are back. Non-prime lenders are lending in all 50 states. We’ve known about this before. They’re doing 100% financing or bankruptcy or foreclosures, they’ll lend a day out of that stuff. You can jump on Scotsman Guide. You can also do a search for non-prime lenders as well and see what’s available. When you reach out to the Scotsman Guide or these banks, reach out and contact the secondary marketing desk.

They will often provide a list of loans that may be scratch and dent, S&D as they call them. People that are 30 to 90 days in default or 90 plus. You may also want to see if they’ve had any buybacks. If they’re looking to move. These are the loans that they’ve sold off their warehouse lines for and had to buy it back because of the borrower defaulting in the first 6 to 12 months. Those are some opportunities. This is a numbers game reaching out. A lot of times, these sellers, these subprime lenders have one person in their organization that’s responsible for this stuff, the sale desk.

You may get a mixed bag of some things, follow up. If you’re looking for stuff here in Texas, it may be easier for them to foreclose and take the asset back. If they’re doing it in multiple states, the bigger the subprime lender is and the bigger the footprint and the more opportunities that you’ll have available. The worst case is if you see that they’re lending a specific area. This is only in specific counties, jump on and see who they’re selling the loans to and then reach out to that lender as a possible source. Contact the banks and the institutions that they’re selling to, if they’ve had any buyback. Let’s face it, non-prime lenders, especially first of the year, the first quarter when appraisals come out, especially with the appraisal numbers have changed.

New Home Builders

The tax values are based from a lot to a lot with improvements. That can lead to nonperforming status pretty dealt relatively quickly. Number six is new home builders especially when you type in and start looking, you’re going to see more and more of these. We already see us popping up in Texas and in other states too that we travel to. They are advertising No Money Down Home Programs, First-time Buyer Programs or $500 down. There was a lot of time the builders or first time home buyers that are targeting in their advertising. The thing is in a Google Search in less than five minutes, I found builder communities that were doing No Money Down Home Programs in twenty-plus states out there.

They’ll often don’t have in-house financing companies that may have a mortgage bank behind them that they’re selling the stuff off to in a relatively quick turn and burn. When you have a default or if the market turns, the new community sees the biggest defaults when markets turn. It’s a common thing. We see that here in Austin. We see it all across the country. Keep that in mind. The opportunity to come in for two things, not only to maybe buy the note from the bank but if you’re targeting specific areas you don’t see a lot of default. You may want to market those areas as potential deals you can take over subject to and do owner financing or wraparound mortgages or turn into rentals and things like that.

Follow Up With Your Old Lists

It’s a play we did years ago and added on quite a few potential subject to deals that were not well. In less than five minutes on Google, I found three builders, especially here who stop here in Texas and other states, LGI Homes, Starlight Homes, and of course, Kindle Homes. They were finance stuff in Houston, Dallas, all across the country that could be potential sources for me. I’m tracking those communities and seeing what’s happening with those things. By tracking, I’m setting an alert in 90 days to go back and check out where they’re building it. I already had their addresses because they will tell you where they’re building it and seeing the default rates in a specific area. Number five seems like an old thing, but this is all about follow up with your old lists.

We have all the lists of old assets NPNs we didn’t buy, but we have a lot. We reach out to the sellers. I’ve kept every tape I’ve ever received and labeled it when I got it and who it came from. That gives you an opportunity to fall back up. I’ve kept in every NDA, Non-disclosure Agreement, I’ve ever signed with the bank. I have a file folder on my desktop on my computer of who I bought signing it with. Those make for great referrals for me to reach back out to, “What do you have? Do you still have anything? Are you still in business? What’s going on?” It’s a great time to reach out to people in the early part of the year and to touch base with them.

Conference Expo List

I also will check the county records on the list to see who they’ve sold to. If you could go in and if I saw an asset to say a condo ad for sale. I can go in and see who they sold it to by checking the county records, the county clerk for the assignment of mortgages. I could see going to different counties that I know they’ve had stuff off of and look and say, “Who did they sell to? I got the address from an old spreadsheet. Let’s see who they sold to.” That could become a potential source for you as well, not only condos but who condos were sold to. I’ve got two sources that I can reach to on a regular basis. Number four is one that might crack you up a little bit, but the conference is an expo list.

Some of the conferences out there advertise who is attending their expos and those become great sources for deal flow. You don’t have to worry about traveling to a place. Save that $1,000 or $2,000. It’s going to cost for a ticket, airfare, hotel bill and food. Many times, they’ll advertise by saying a company and the job title is like the special asset manager for one Oak Funding or special asset managers for ABC Funding. Let me google that or use LinkedIn to jump in and find the name and phone number. LinkedIn is a great way to leverage that. I’ll give you an example I am in, which has about twenty different events a year. Information Management Network shares the company names and titles.

They’ll only give you the exact name of the person, but they do special asset manager, servicing, whatever. They’ll give you the exact name and title of the people attending. For the last couple of years, we’ve used the VA, Virtual Assistant, sending an email over or export a list from their websites or whether it’s, “Go find out who this person is on LinkedIn.” We can connect with them directly. The Secondary Mortgage Bankers Association and the Western Mortgage Bankers Association share the names and company information of the people attending so you can set up and make an appointment. You can get all of this information without having to pay or register that you’re interested and then the stuff can come to an email. You’re going to log on the website and take a look at it too.

It’s easy and cheap to hire a VA. It’s $4 an hour to scrub the list and pull the contact information but save money on event tickets and traveling. If the event is in your backyard or in the place that you don’t mind driving to or going to, that’s great. This is still a great way to set up meetings with people that you don’t have to be at. “I’m going to be at the hotel, I’m not attending the event, but let’s meet for coffee or drink and set up a tab at the nearest bar inside the conference or expo center.” This works well as for you to be able to leverage your time and still get a lot of stuff done without having to go out. I’ve been wrong with pressing the flash. A lot of stuff there, but it’s valuable to do this, especially if you’re getting started and doing this on a part-time basis. You don’t have time to take off from your job or away from your family. It’s a great way to leverage and kill two birds technically with one stone.

Whole Loan Sales

Three is another thing that we have not talked about before but using the name whole loan sales. This is leveraging LinkedIn to contact special asset managers, but also typing special assets or secondary marketing typing whole loan sales. If you do that in LinkedIn, it will pop up roughly about 32,000 individuals on LinkedIn that have that in their online LinkedIn profiles. These people will handle larger trades and note sales. These institutions, they will also handle one-offs stuff. They should have portfolios for you to review on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Contact them with a contact tab on there and make a connection. You may have to use an InMail to send a message to them. It’s worth it. It may be worth you upgrading your LinkedIn profile for a month. They increase that number and be able to do that. It’s important to include a short message and a short video to boost your responses and say exactly what you’re looking for. If you send 100, they may not look at LinkedIn on a pretty often basis. They do at ten, you may only get 10% responses. Take the time, record a short two-minute video or less of exactly what you’re looking for, and make it look professional. I’ve done a video with my background of WeCloseNotes.com or the Note Closers Show to say exactly what we’re looking for.

Bauer Financial List

I’m going to have to talk with them and it’s boosted our responses. Number two is a list that you can purchase out there. It’s called the Bauer Financial List. Bauer Financial, as a financial writing agency for banks and credit unions, tracks the default rates, the risks, the ratios. It’s a beautiful list that you can order and customize on how you want it. I like to order for all the banks, not Credit Union but banks that have five more branches in the country. It’s a good size list and it gives me the CEO, the bank’s phone number and their website. It will not give me email addresses, but it’s easy to reach out to somebody if you’ve got a direct name and website, phone number there to do that.

 

The Bauer list gives me a list of the ratios, shows me their whole portfolio on where it’s broken up to residential, commercial, multi-family, default rates, reserves and things like that. It’s a valuable tool to have a list that you can look at the number of branches. The bigger the branches, the better. It gives you the contact names and phone numbers, no email addresses. You need to spend a little bit of time going through your list. When I ordered my list, I had 2031 banks with five or more branches. Whether you’re interested in residential, commercial, multi-family, this works well for you. This list will be pulled and my list that I pulled, it will cost you $300 or more depending on the poll.

Pulling Assignments

Keep in mind, $300 or more. If you pulled the condo association lists from the different lists, that will cost you a lot more than $300 because it depends. There are a lot more condo association contacts depending on the county you pool and who you want on those lists. The number one source we think here. We’ve been doing this for the last few years and it’s worked out well. It’s pulling assignments, going into the county clerks, online offices that you can do online. It’s looking to see what’s been recorded as assignments. With every note deal, there’s an assignment of mortgages that gets recorded at the county clerk to transfer ownership. The beauty is there are two parties to that. If I bought a note, there’s going to be an assignment from Condor and it’s going to give me Condor’s name and my name.

If I sell that note to somebody else, it’s going to have my name in that party hung them back in. I’m a big fan of jumping on the county clerk or the county recorder’s offices. Each county has either/or they call it and doing no search for assignments. Not every county in America will let you track by document type. This is important. I want you to look by the APN numbers. I want to know the address or the borrower’s name. That’s a little difficult sometimes. If I can find the assignment, that’s the big thing out there. Even a lot of those that let you search for assignments, the information they’ll give you is not clean in that it doesn’t make sense. It won’t allow you to export that information. It’s copying and pasting. It’s not clean.

They merge files and merge cells. It’s really hard. Trust me, because I’ve done this in most of the major counties for my twelve favorite states out there. Some counties are wanting a list of assignments as a document you can search for. This is effective in building and finding new buyers and sellers of notes. You don’t know who was assigned to or what entities are out there. You can sometimes pay title companies to pull this data for you. It can take a little bit time. They may not know exactly what they’re looking for because they may have different access than you, but often I would jump on first and see what’s available because sometimes the county has a lot. You download 200 names or 200 searches or 100 at a time. Sometimes it’s 25.

It can be a tedious thing when there are 1,000 of assignments following each county. Most of each county, those are the major ones every year. It’s often a large list and unformatted so sometimes you’ve got to spent some time to clear it up. It’s not easy to use or download. I’ll give you an example of some of the numbers behind some stuff that we’ve pulled. I pulled data from November 2018 to the end of November 2019, full twelve months. I pulled Harris County. It was easier than expected, 37,000 assignments. Although it took me several hours of editing the spreadsheet to separate it, to clean it up. It’s a total of 37,191 assignments found in Harris County in those twelve months.

In Orange County, California, there are 23,551 assignments. That’s great but it was a very hard list. Once I looked at the number and tried to export it, it was not feasible at all. It was very hard. Flipping coast to the other Orange County in Florida, there were 20,536 assignments. This used to be a cleaner list. It was easier to export. It’s harder now. They tweaked up the website, so it’s not near as easy to export. I’ll give an example. A number of years ago, there were 14,000 assignments filed in Orange County, Orlando. They narrowed it down to 9,500 in unique names and entities. We’ve used that list to find some great sources out there. Bear County in San Antonio, Texas is with 12,700 assignments. It’s not the easiest thing to pull. What they show you cuts off often the party’s name.

It doesn’t give you the full names because they have a limited cell reach on there. It’s not the cleanest thing. You have to go back individually one at a time and read the actual documents. Franklin County in Columbus, Ohio is with 7,300 assignments. It’s not the easiest thing to pull either. You’re like, “Why Harris County in Houston, Texas, Scott? Isn’t Texas a fast foreclosure state and aren’t you going to have a hard time buying notes that are at a discount?” The answer to that is yes, you will but Houston, Texas in Lone Star States are a very attractive state for other lenders to lend in or to do lending in there. They’re selling those notes off to a variety of investors, not just institutions but also investors like you and me. Plus, we’ve got a lot of large growth in construction in the past several years in Houston.

We’ve also had increased default rates with the hurricanes, which has been good growth. Some people got hurt with the hurricanes in Houston and the flooding that goes on there in Houston. I don’t live there. I’m not a big fan of the armpit of Texas but it’s still a desirable place for lenders. I believe we’re poised to see a lot of large defaults with new home sales there in Houston, on the outskirts, not just Harris County, but in the outside communities. Rusk’s County and some of the other big ones Fannin, Kenedy and those areas around there. Harris County leads Texas in short sale listings a couple of hundred. That number has been increasing every month for the last few months where we are starting to see that take place there.

Texas Fast Foreclosure Laws, which is nice equals the banks desirable to the land here, which means a lot of opportunities. It’s also the largest populated county in Texas at 4.7 million population. The next largest would be Dallas County at 2.8 million. It’s the largest populated county in Texas. The beautiful thing is it was easier to pull the data than other counties. That’s what made it so desirable for me. After spending a weekend working on this, I was able to pull the full 37,000 assignments. There’s a big pot of gold on what I’ve pulled. There are 37,191 assignments. How did that break down? It was grantee/grantors on each side.

There was a total of 74,660 grantors between those series 70,000 and that narrowed down, once I filtered it down to under 13,500 unique entities. There are 45,000 grantees and that narrowed down to 5,365 unique names. When you take those grantors and grantees, some people were on both sides of the transaction. It equaled 17,558 unique entities. The people who have bought or sold and assigned or assigned a mortgage in Harris County in the last couple of months. That’s a huge amount of opportunity. Let’s break it down in that. When I did a quick search out at 17,000 was 205 self-directed IRA investors that had their name. They were a variety of entities, self-directed IRA companies. Remember that 871 of these entities had banks in their name where you look for bank and it popped up.

There are a lot of lending institutions, people originating loans and then selling stuff off. There was also a ton over a fourth of the list. We’re made up of LLCs and investors. It’s so-and-so LLC, so-and-so trust. It wasn’t a traditional bank or finance company or institution. That’s a lot of opportunities, a lot of potential sources, maybe not for huge lists. You might find some of the big lists. I’ve done some banks in there. I saw a lot of banks outside of Texas on that list. There are maybe a lot of opportunities there for you. Also, when you look for trusts, like Third Street Trust Company for an individual asset and there were 1,755 trusts that were labeled on it. It’s a big list. You also had a chunk of cities, municipalities or school districts that aren’t going to be valuable on that list. Overall, between those amount, you had roughly 8,000, 9,000 entities on there and that can be valuable sources for your note business.

People ask me when I was talking about this because I talked a little bit in Note Night in America. “Is there availability for people to get those lists?” you asked. There is and we put together a basic training program that we’re working through on these to help you as investors out there. As note investors, Note students to be able to use these ten sources for 2020. We created ten ways to find out deals in 2020 and an Online Training Course Program. It’s twelve different video training on using these strategies one at a time, how to approach, checklists, scripts, step-by-step guides on how to reach out to them and what to say. You’re going to find unlimited email and phone support if you want to have questions about the list or questions about what you’re focused on. We’re also putting together a private basecamp group for those that are signed up for the training. It’s a study at your own pace. It’s a video training.

It’s really a great thing that we’ve put together to help those that are serious about making 2020 a very positive and high deal flow year for you. Another thing, something out of the bonus and we’re going to throw it in. We’ve talked about throwing in. We will be throwing in the complete Harris County assignment list, which is roughly about $1,999 value is what I’ve seen for these main sources. The thing is the list that we pulled, we’re going to give it to you. We’ve cleaned up or narrowed it down to that 17,000 names. That’s part of it. We’re going to send you the Bauer Financial List of Banks with five polls branches. That’s over a $300 value if you were to order that. We’re giving you a complete list of Florida condo association names over a $900 value is what it costs. The names and then the president of the associations is there for you too with our contact and the address and stuff like that. That’s a huge list and a huge value add to you. Between those three, it’s over $3,100 value for you. Those lists are going to be available for everybody. As we update the Harris County list, we will make it available.

As we add contacts, as we pull contact information, we’ll be updating the list in the basecamp group for those that are part of it. I’m working on lists myself. As we pull with our VA’s, as we scrub and find contact information because we do some mail marches to find contact information, we’re going to make that list. Why? Because I don’t expect everybody to sign up for that thing. I expect it will be a few people that want to do some great stuff. I have no problem sharing that with them. The normal price of something like this out in the market would be around $1,000 but we’re not going to do that for you. I want you guys to take action and do something. We have a very special price offering up as being at $599. It’s $599 for you to take advantage of this.

 

It’s an awesome thing for you. We need to call it a late Black Friday or Cyber Monday Sale or whatever you want to call it. $599 is what we’re offering up for that and that’s the price until we get the list completed. When we get the list completed from Harris County, it’s going to be a lot more than $599. You can go to Bit.ly/TenWays2020 or shoot me an email at Scott@WeCloseNotes.com. We’ll make sure to send you the link over for that. We believe that if you want to do something big in 2020, you’ve got to do things differently than what you’ve done in the last couple of years. That means doing different things, going out and hunting in some new hunting grounds for you, fishing in some new fishing holes.

We want to help you find those deals, find those hunting grounds, find those sources. Let’s face it, there are more than enough deals to go around still to this day. Some people complain about they’re not doing deals. It’s just that they’re not marketing. If you look at the huge amount of originations and new loans and refinance is taking place, it’s still having a 2.5% default rate that we can tell. That still leads to hundreds of thousands of notes available for investors like you and me to take advantage of and purchase. Make America great again one default borrower at a time. I hope you enjoyed that.

Once again, those are ten ways that we’re using to find new deals in 2020. We want you to take advantage of that. If that’s something you want to do, great. Reach out to me. I’m glad to email you the link for that before the New Year arrives or as the New Year gets rocking and rolling for you to take advantage of that. It’s $599 special. I’m doing the special pricing right now until 2020 hits for you. Take advantage of it. Go do something. Even if you don’t do, take one of those or two of those ten ways and apply it to your business. I guarantee, you’ll find deals we just worked for and go from there. We’ll see you all at the top.

 

Important Links

• LaneGuide.com
• We Close Notes – YouTube channel
• Paperstac.com
• Scotsman Guide
• Texas Savings and Mortgage Lending
• Information Management Network
• Bauer Financial
• Bit.ly/TenWays2020
• Scott@WeCloseNotes.com
• http://TenWaysIn2020.com

 

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