The Wisconsin Investor
Each week, we bring you interviews with some of Wisconsin's top real estate investors who share their tips, tricks, and strategies that you can implement right away. This show is dedicated to helping Wisconsin real estate investors elevate their game. Along with interviews, I'll also dive into hot topics in solo episodes and feature experts from various real estate sectors across Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Investor
The Note Investing Strategy Banks Hope You Never Learn
đď¸ How Scott Carson Bought $1 Billion in Distressed Debt â And Helped Homeowners Along the Way
Ever wondered how to become the bank and earn double-digit returnsâwithout swinging a hammer or flipping houses?
In this episode of The Wisconsin Investor, we sit down with Scott Carson, founder of WeCloseNotes.com, who shares how he's purchased over $1 billion in distressed debt and created win-win outcomes for struggling homeowners.
đ What Youâll Learn:
⢠What note investing is and how it works (buying mortgage debt directly from banks at 40â60¢ on the dollar)
⢠Why you donât need to fix the propertyâjust ârehab the borrowerâ
⢠How Scott earned nearly 90% returns on a $12,000 note while helping a family avoid foreclosure
⢠The top strategies for working with borrowers, foreclosing when necessary, or reselling notes for profit
⢠The âsweet spotâ for non-performing notes ($100Kâ$250K)
⢠How to source notes directly from special asset departments, LinkedIn, and whole loan traders
⢠How to fund deals through self-directed IRA investors (and how to find them)
⢠Why note investing might be the most overlooked path to passive income and real impact
đĄ Scottâs approach proves you can create serious cash flow and do good in the process.
đĽ Free Training & Resources:
đ NoteWeekend.com â Grab Scottâs free 3.5-hour course on note investing
đ TalkWithScottCarson.com â Book a call with Scott directly
Or check out Scott's Website by visiting: https://weclosenotes.com/
Whether you're a seasoned real estate investor or brand new and looking for your first passive deal, this episode will open your eyes to a powerful strategy most people never hear about.
What is up, people? I am back with another episode here, and I am bringing you guys as usual. I think I do this all the time but I'm bringing you guys a great guest today. At the time we're recording this, I had the opportunity to be on his podcast just a few days ago, so when this drops it'll be a little bit older, because we got some other ones in the bank right now. But go back and I'm going to introduce our guests here in a second. Before I do that, though, I'm going to get into today's sponsor, as I do on every episode, and that is Wisconsin Discount Properties.
Speaker 1:We are bringing you guys deals to your inbox every single week, 6 am, it hits your inbox. So if you're looking for off-market real estate and you're not on our buyers list, what the heck are you doing? So get on the list, go to the website, put your information in. What we're also doing right now is we are giving away our BRRRR for beginners course. So this is a huge opportunity, guys, if you're out there and you're looking to get started and you want to do the BRRRR process and you're not sure where to start. This is an action-oriented course, so it's not just education. You're not going to come in here and learn the fundamentals of it. You're going to actually be in and forced to take action to get your first deal in the first 45 to 90 days of taking the course. So, to get the course for free, join the buyers list and somebody from our team will get on a call with you and after that call we'll get you the discount code to get there.
Speaker 1:All right, let's get into today's episode, because I got a gentleman here who's got tons of experience and is going to bring you guys something we haven't had on the episode yet, and is going to bring you guys something we haven't had on the episode yet, which I'm pretty excited about. So I have Mr Scott Carson with me, who is the owner and manager of WeCloseNotescom. So he's based out of Austin, texas. So we've got nothing against Texas here. We love Texas. It's a great place. So not a Wisconsinite, but this guy does business all over the country, guys. He's got the Notes Closer Show, which has millions of listeners across 130 countries. So this guy knows his stuff. He's got tons of people that follow him. He does an online summit and a conference called Note Camp that you guys can get access to as well. There's a ton of other things, so we're going to dive into the note world a little bit today raising private money, short sales, non-performing notes, all kinds of fun stuff. But with that let me bring in Mr Scott Carson. Scott, how you doing buddy.
Speaker 2:I'm doing great today, Corey, Excited to be here. We were talking about Tampa last time last week, so I had to wear a Tampa shirt here for you.
Speaker 1:Pink flamingos all over the place here for you, man, my man bringing it. I love it, buddy, I love it. Well, I'm excited to have you on, man. We had a great time recording on your podcast, and so I'm super excited to bring you to our audience and get to flip the script a little bit with you today and be the one asking the questions today. So tell the audience a little bit, man. You've been in the game for a long time. Can you remember back to when you started and what it was that had you even getting into this crazy world we call real estate investing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can. I mean, it's like many folks reading Rich Dad, poor Dad and decide you want to do something different and then going to network at the local real estate clubs and I actually bought a couple investment properties on my own without any training or education and fell flat on my face. That's a little bit of like I thought I knew everything because I grew up in a hardware store down in South Texas with my dad. So I thought I could be like Tim the tool man, taylor, and fix everything. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:The young audience has no idea who Tim the tool man Taylor is by the way. Exactly yeah.
Speaker 2:It's been for tools, baby, you know what?
Speaker 1:I mean that's right, oh man.
Speaker 2:But no, I mean, I fell flat in my face like some folks do.
Speaker 2:The only person that made any money was a realtor and stuff like that. So I looked my wounds for a couple of years and was fortunate enough to get our assets out of a sling, as I, with a couple, I guess, say, educators and investors here locally who were traveling the country speaking on real estate, and I said that's what I want to do. So I left banking and threw my lot in with them and for four years I had an apprenticeship with them, not only on the mortgage side because we were doing originations for investors and stuff like that, but really learning the creative side of real estate, investing all across the country from the likes of, like Ron Legrand and some of the other folks. So I remember that. And then sending out like my first batch of letters to the postcard you know, letters to postcard I mean letters to foreclosure listings, people facing foreclosure and the first phone call I got was this lady who hadn't paid in like a year, she hadn't had water on in like six months to her house.
Speaker 1:She had a huge cavey home.
Speaker 2:She was letting her four dogs run wild throughout the house and defecating and doing all that stuff. So when you walk into the house, on the carpet it goes squish, squish. You know what? I mean, oh, yeah, it was so bad that the lower like 18 inches of the sheetrock was all yellow from the dogs. They, the lower 18 inches of the sheetrock was all yellow from the dogs. They were just licking her on the face. There's food, just a real positive environment.
Speaker 1:Wow that's your first one. This is your first experience of direct-to-seller.
Speaker 2:Exactly Walking in. She was still using the toilet, so each toilet was full of excrement, and then she was doing it in a five-gallon Homer bucket. Oh my gosh, dude. What's running through my head is hearing Ron Legrand saying the smell of shit and piss is the smell of money, and so I'm like, okay, this is how it goes Well that was my first, you know I go home showered off and anyway we didn't end up buying that one. But that was my first indoctrination into real estate investing the right way, oh my goodness, man.
Speaker 1:So how long have you been in this game? When did you get started? When was that first experience?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so basically, technically, I bought my first investment property back in 2001. And we found that they were trying to be landlords. But that was in 2006 was when I bought my first. Once I bought it, we took over a property subject to, and then we optioned another one and it got rocking along. I sink my teeth into the distressed note side and bought my first non-performing note back in 2007 on this condo in Arizona and I bought. That's what I love. I love buying the distressed debt side of things without having to deal with toilet stands and trash outs. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. Tell everybody out here. So what I want to do today, scott, for my sake too and for our audience sake somebody who's this is their first time being introduced, maybe, to some of the terminology you're using, that kind of stuff let's make this in CRAN, third grade level. Can you explain how do you buy a non-performing note? What is a non-performing note? I mean, I kind of know what that is, but just explain it in third grade terms. And how do you get access to some of these things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly, great, great stuff there. So a non-performing mortgage, non-performing note is exactly like it sounds Somebody who's not paying on their mortgage debt. You know like if you guys target like foreclosure lists, well that's listed in the full list of non-performing notes where people haven't paid in six months to six years or longer. And so we buy that debt not to buy the property, because I don't really own the property. When I buy the mortgage debt, I literally am replacing the bank. I'm buying that mortgage debt not buy the mortgage debt. I literally am replacing the bank. I'm buying that mortgage debt not from the homeowner. I'm buying the actual physical mortgage from their bank or lender at usually a substantial discount. The borrower still owes what they owe. It's just swapping out one bank for another. Technically I'm the bank and I have all the same rights that the bank does to reach out to say hey, corey, you haven't paid your mortgage in six months.
Speaker 2:What happened? What's your? You know? What's your country Western song? You know? Did grandma get run over by a reindeer? Did the Packers lose? Did you spend it all on Bud Light? You know? After the loss, you know, did you? Did you your job at the chief curd factory lay?
Speaker 1:you off for a period of time.
Speaker 2:You know what's the situation. So we buy that debt at discount. So if they haven't paid in six months and they owe 200 on a $175,000 house, we would probably come in and buy about 50 cents on the dollar value of the house. We might pay $85,000 for that $125,000 asset, where they owe more and they're underwater. And so we approach homeowners and say, listen, hey, we know you haven't paid in a while. Before we foreclose on you, which we have the right to do, do you want to stay or do you want to go?
Speaker 2:If you want to stay, let's work out a payment plan, because we actually, since we bought the debt cheaper, we can be much more flexible With the borrower say, hey, you've been paid in a year. Well, can you bring three months to the table? Can you pay your existing payment plus $200 a month to get you caught back up on? You know what I mean. Or, hey, you don't want to stay? Okay, let's sell the property, let's do a short sale and we can accept a little bit of a loss off of what's owed, but we still bought it at a price that was much cheaper than we paid for. So that's kind of what we do is literally, we get these lists in from banks, from mortgage companies all across the country and it's going to be like 200 to 500 different notes on properties all across the United States, including Wisconsin. You know what I mean. We see some stuff in.
Speaker 1:Wisconsin Okay.
Speaker 2:And we can cherry pick this stuff. Some people think you need to have millions and millions and millions of dollars, and while that does help, no, you don't have to have millions of dollars. A lot of banks excluding, like the big ones like Bank of America, chase, citi, wells Fargo. You're not going to buy a one-off mortgage from them, but there are plenty of other lenders that will sell this stuff to you and the goal isn't I know a lot of people come from hey, I want to own the real estate side of things, right?
Speaker 2:I want to own the property. I want to go out and touch it and rub it and replace the paint carpet. Well, I don't want to do that. I want to get paid, like a bank does, right, you know. And so let's put some numbers, like we just talked about. So let's just say it's simple they owe $200. It's worth $200. They haven't months to a year. Why the bank hasn't foreclosed already. I don't know. I mean, it may be a lower valued asset in their portfolio. They may have tried to work it out. It might be in a state that's longer to foreclose on.
Speaker 1:There's a whole variety of reasons why they didn't sell it to us.
Speaker 2:So we come in, we see this, we like the value. We evaluate all the loan documents, the servicing notes between the borrower and the bank, see that this borrower may be a good fit. And so if we buy it at 100 and let's say their mortgage rate is at 6%, well, if they just start paying on time again. So we bought that 6% mortgage at 50 cents a dollar If they just start paying on time, it's a 12% cash and cash return.
Speaker 2:If they bring three or four months to the table, that goes to a mid-teens maybe 20% first year. Wow, we get the bar back on track making payments for 12 months. It's now considered a re-performing note. I could turn around and sell it back to Wall Street or back to other mortgage companies who are looking for performing paper at, say, 80, 90 cents of the dollar. So I've now gotten in a year. I got some skin in the gang three to four grand 12 months of on-time payments. If I bought it for $100, I'm now turning around selling it at $0.80.
Speaker 2:So that's at $160 to $170, making $60,000 on the note sale and so that's a pretty good return on a $100,000 investment. Oh my goodness. The nice thing that I like about note investing is you don't have to do it full time. The great thing is that there are heavy lifters Fixing flippers. You've really got to be spot on for a lot of times, meeting the contractors and knowing your people and knowing comps in time. If I can rehab the borrower outreach, I'm not knocking on doors trying to evict people myself. If they won't play ball, then we kick it to our real estate attorney in that state to do the foreclosure and then they foreclose then if we could sell it at auction. Sometimes we do that. If we don't sell it at auction, we take it back. Then we just bump it to our local realtor to handle the eviction, to clean out and then the rehab side of things.
Speaker 1:Wow. So then you end up flipping it.
Speaker 2:Worst case scenario yeah, we flip it, We've held it Once we foreclose and if it doesn't sell at the auction, it's our own REO. We can do whatever we want with it.
Speaker 1:Owner-finance yeah you're controlling the property, because you control the debt Exactly and that's why I only buy in first lien position.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's people that buy second liens and junior liens and that's fine. It's a much riskier spot to be in because if the first lien is not getting paid, the first lien can foreclose and wipe them all out completely.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Okay, so that's the risk. So I'm thinking about that as raising private money. Right? What do I say to my lenders who have a smaller dollar amount. They want to come in and maybe they want to fund rehab or do whatever. They're going to go in second or third position potentially For them? Obviously it's a relationship thing when you're doing private money, but like what, what are you communicating to those people or the people out here who are doing that as far as what to explain? You know to be full disclosing to their, to their potential lenders?
Speaker 2:So you're talking about if they're funding from a second in a second lien position or buy a note deal.
Speaker 1:Say I got a. Say I got a you know, friend, family member, whatever they want, they got 20 grand laying around. They want to put it to work. But I got a bank note on the first bank. No, it's going to be in first position.
Speaker 2:So always make sure there's a couple of things. Make sure that the first is getting paid, that's one of the most important things, cause that's going to wipe you out. Make sure taxes are getting paid, cause that's the thing that would wipe us all out. Yeah, first, more than you're comfortable with, you know, we've all had deals that were maybe okay, the market's chasing. We're at a combined loan to value of 70, 75, 80. You know, I don't really want to get above that, unless it's an emergency or something. For the most part, but try to stay at that. You know, I guess the golden rule when it comes into it is stay below 70, 75% of the after repair value. If you're rehabbing the property Right On the note side, we're only raising capital in the first lien position because that's really all that we're buying. And then we try to have the investor who funded the note fund a little bit extra for foreclosure costs and servicing and rehab if we need to.
Speaker 1:Okay, got it. So that was one of my other questions I had for you, scott. So, like you said, you don't have to have millions and millions of dollars around to do this, right? So are you raising private money then to buy the notes and you're keeping some kind of spread for kind of doing all the work, or how is that working as far as being able to buy several of these? Or is somebody out there looking to buy their first note who doesn't have a ton of cash but has a lot of time and grit? How are they going to do this thing?
Speaker 2:So here's the golden rule when you're being a real estate investor, it's no matter if you're trying to raise $50,000 or $5 million. One of the greatest ways to find investors is a networking, but also we target a lot of self-directed IRA investors people who have used their IRA to either buy a rental property or to lend money out of their IRA and you can literally go to the county records office or the county appraisal districts to find these investors in just about every state. There's a few non-disclosure states out there.
Speaker 2:We go here in Texas or I go to Florida, one of our favorite states. There we love.
Speaker 1:Florida.
Speaker 2:Exactly A lot of money down in Florida.
Speaker 2:You could literally go to Collier County or Lee County and go to the appraisal district and just type in, say, equity Trust, or type in Quest Trust or Mid-Atlantic, and Quest is no longer around but there's still stuff that's still floating around with them. And if you type in that in the property owner's name, it's going to pull up a list of people who have used their IRA to buy a rental property and we all know if they're using their IRA to buy property. It's got to be passive, right, it's got to be a hands-on. Ideal for note investors because it's passive. Yes, we buy a note. We get the bar re-performing at 12. We borrowed the money at 8. Great, we're paying our investor back there 8% on a quarterly basis. We don't pay monthly payments. It's is we don't pay monthly payments, we do once a quarter. It speeds up a little bit. It keeps the IRA, but you can literally then. The great thing about going back to these county records is it's got the mailing address. You know what I mean Sometimes these counties.
Speaker 2:You can actually do a few buttons and it downloads a full spreadsheet, borrower's address name and then their mailing address to do a mail rush.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:And the great thing about IRA investors is that we know they're investors just like you and me. Right A, they've got money that they need to put to work most of the time and two I mean three they're always looking for deals. Yes, and actually, if you've talked to most of the IRA companies and custodians out there, actually paper is one of the biggest things these people are invested in. Now, if they're lending you money, they're in the paper game right.
Speaker 2:Right, so they're lending on a first lien. Well, how about you fund a first lien investment, a note deal? You're still going to get paid your interest. You're going to be either codenamed on the assignment of mortgage which transfers ownership, not a deed, Because when you're buying a mortgage.
Speaker 2:The property doesn't change hands, it's just the lender does Okay, okay. And so that's a great thing for folks now finding people who have lent money out of their IRA. If you go to the clerk or the recorder's office and do a same search for like equity trust, quest trust, it'll pull up and do a deed search for that. You'll pull up people who have lent money out of their IRA and who they lent the money to and how much they lent out as well. Really, we will do a release of lien search and do the same search. You can see people who've gotten paid back have money sitting on the sidelines now.
Speaker 2:So it's not as easy on the county clerk side because you've got to look at deeds and stuff like that. But it's a great thing to hire a VA to do and let them go off and running for it. But literally, I mean, even if you're in a nondisclosure state like Minnesota is nondisclosure, virginia, maryland nondisclosure because of government, california, arizona, texas, florida, ohio the land from where Equity Trust is located you can literally find thousands of people who have a self-directed IRA to fund your no deal or fund your real estate deal.
Speaker 1:Right, and they don't have to be in your state, they can be anywhere.
Speaker 2:It's a beautiful thing with a thing called Zoom.
Speaker 1:You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean. So the only direct mail market we do in the note business is actually sending out to IRA investors. That's literally it, because all of our deal flow for the most part comes direct from our online marketing via LinkedIn or targeting servicing companies or mortgage bankers that we can find in any state. They have to be registered for that state as a licensed mortgage banker.
Speaker 1:Okay, I was just going to ask you that. So, going back to when you said you'll get some tapes I think they call it in the note business, is that right? That's correct Like 200 to 500 of these things on a tape and you're going through and kind of evaluating them all and doing these kinds of things and again, I imagine you probably have a system or a VA that can do all of that and then kind of highlight some of the ones that you want to go for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's all I mean. You're getting a spreadsheet. So I always take the OTSC syndrome out of that. Oh, that's so cute. You know what I mean? That property is so cute. I just want to buy it. I, no, don't do that. Do not fall in love with a property. Fall in love with the numbers, the way.
Speaker 2:I look at it, then let this be a property so on this spreadsheet yeah, on this tape we'll have the borrower's name, how far behind they are what they owe as far as the unpaid principal balance, potential legal balance. An estimated value of the property and then what the seller will give us.
Speaker 2:Of course, it's usually Zillow but we just use that on the front end. We'll always do deeper, do don't? So we can run formulas based on what we think, what they tell us. As far as pricing, some of them will say well, we want full value, which they call par. I'm like, we don't want to pay for par, we want a discount, right, right.
Speaker 2:We always want a discount. So, running some formulas based on what we would buy that note at and then what their monthly P&I payment should be or what we would modify it for, we can run some quick formulas to understand okay, here's a top 20, here's a top 30 out of this list of 200. And then we just submit a bid in on all 30 of them in just a few minutes, knowing that the banks, the lenders, are not going to accept all 30. If they did, we'd probably bid too much, which we can say okay. But knowing that out of 30, okay, we get 10 that are accepted. And once those are accepted then we do the deeper dive. Then we're going to send somebody out to drive by the property and pull a broker price opinion to give us a true value of the property, not a testament.
Speaker 2:We're going to check taxes. We're going to talk to the attorney that's handling it, see how far they are in the foreclosure process or if they haven't started. If the borrower's filed bankruptcy like a BK, chapter 13, where are they on the payment plan process? Because we like BKs because it basically turns into cashflow. If the condition of the property comes back, then when we see the online stuff, we can reduce our bid. If it comes back and there's $6,000 or $10,000 in back taxes, we can reduce our bid and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, because you're going to have to catch them up, right? Yeah, essentially, it's a big wall.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. We kind of figured that into our bid to reduce it by taxes, owed, okay, but if the property looks good and our little bit of due diligence on the borrower and the borrower responses and, of course, the collateral file, which is this is really, this is what we're buying right here. This is a file on a note. You know this is in Kankakee, illinois. It was worth borrower was supposed to pay $578 a month on it and we paid. What did we pay? We paid 25 grand for this note of $80,000.
Speaker 1:Come on now Come on, no, yeah,000.
Speaker 2:They were upside down, but we bought it at $25,000. And so at $578,000 a month. That's their P&I payment, $578,000 a month. We figured this real fast $578,000 times 12 months, that's $69,036. That's a pretty good ROI divided by $25,000, right? What do? We got that's a 27.8% cash-in-cash return to us. Now we've got to take some servicing costs out of that Still.
Speaker 1:You're still going to be over $20,000.
Speaker 2:That's what we shoot for. We want to try we can get them back on track. Shoot for at least a 20% cash-in-cash return when you figure in servicing costs, your servicing costs on a non-performing, that's about 90 bucks a month. Performing, it's 25. Um, if we have to foreclose, that's illinois. It's not usually the fastest. Avoid cook county like the plague.
Speaker 2:But yeah, he's not bad so that's going to cost us probably another three to five grand to foreclose, you know okay, and go from there. So, um, but the my biggest goal is to like to rehab the borrower. You know, not rehab the properties. I've done plenty of that, we still will do. There are still deals that we'll just buy to foreclose on, to take the property back If they're vacant or they haven't paid in five years. We know we're going to foreclose. You guys have a little bit of an older community up in Wisconsin, in Green Bay, so we deal with a lot of reverse mortgages where the borrower is deceased and nobody's there paying. You haven't paid in a couple of years, so we'll buy those and have a big discount, with a note that we're just going to have to rehab them and go from there.
Speaker 2:That's the thing I mean that's the great thing is you get these lists from banks. Most of the time you can just cherry pick. Like I said, if we submit an offer on 30, we're hoping to get 10 back. If we close on two or three out of those, we're sitting very happy. For the most part, yeah 20% plus.
Speaker 1:That's no joke. These days that's pretty tough to get. So that's pretty awesome that you're able to do that and sounds like pretty consistently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we bought over a billion dollars in notes in residential and commercial. Commercial is a little bit trickier.
Speaker 1:Whoa. Did you sell that? A second Scott Back the train up? Did you say billion with a B?
Speaker 2:We bought over a billion dollars in distressed debt since I started doing this back in that's insane bro. Yeah, I mean we bought a lot of stuff during, you know, 2010, 2014,. Miami condos for five grand. You know what I mean. It takes two years to foreclose, but it was still like I can. I can throw five grand after a, you know, a 50 to $200,000 condo and let's sit there for a while and see what it appreciates back to.
Speaker 1:So that's insanity, bro. So let me say this step one. First of all, what you're sharing right now is awesome. Like this is totally making sense to me. I've, I've, I've, I've been in the note realm as far as hearing about it Like I'm a note, I'm a note supplier, so to speak, as far as doing some private money lending and hard money lending, and I've given people private notes. I've been on that side of things. I've never bought non-performing debt before. So this is a whole new world for me, in which I think are, I'm going to guess, 99% of our audience. This is probably new information for them, and you're breaking it down in a very easy way right now, which is awesome.
Speaker 2:We're a much smaller community. I mean when I started back doing this back in 2007, 2008,. There's not really a market for it. I mean, there's people that were around in like the 80s for the savings and loan crisis the RTZ Resolution Trust Corporation, when all the banks were failing and all this distressed debt stuff like that happened.
Speaker 2:And then 2008, when everything crashed, we saw more commercial notes than we saw residential, because it took longer for the residential stuff to hit the markets as banks were filing bankruptcy and delaying things. Sure, With the commercial defaults, we've seen that taking place since 2020. We've bought a lot of small balance apartment complexes, even like 300 plus units that we bought the debt at a big discount and then stepped into cash flow or stepped into taking over the complex and working with the bars to walk away in a lot of cases. Wow. But it's a different market out here. I mean when we used to buy pennies on the dollar. Now it's not like it was 10, 15 years ago, but it's still $0.40, $0.50, $0.60 on the dollar. What's owed is a good price. To buy stuff off of value, not overvalued stuff.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean good price to buy stuff off of value, not overvalued stuff. You know what I mean. Okay, got it. So if I wanted to let's say Scott I was like, hey, I want to go do this today, like I want to start buying some non-performing notes. How do I get this tape? Or how do you start, like, what's step one for somebody out here listening to this that says like man, this sounds like the lane I want to go down. What's step one besides, get connected with you to get some coaching.
Speaker 2:Right, there's two paths, and that's one if you're already targeting foreclosure lists, like you're buying a monthly foreclosure list from a list provider, you can look at that foreclosure list and then look at the lenders or banks that are the foreclosure aspect.
Speaker 2:Now I wouldn't target, like I said, the top five or ten banks and if the foreclosure like here in Texas, we do everything so fast. If the foreclosure is next month or in two weeks, I'm not going to target that bank for that property. I don't care about the property. What I care about is getting the right department in the bank and then getting their list of stuff all across the country on a regular basis so that one foreclosure at 123 Main Street, I'll contact the attorney foreclosing or I'll call the corporate office, the bank and the lender and depending on where they're at and how big they are, they go by a couple different names.
Speaker 2:And so you can target the special assets department, the secondary marketing department, the chief credit risk officer.
Speaker 2:If it's an insurance or rate the whole loan trading department. Those are the four job titles special asset manager, secondary marketing manager, whole loan trader or chief credit risk officer. All right, and you can actually go over to LinkedIn and type in those same names and find people that do all these same jobs in the easiest way. Right? So that's two things, and it's like just dropping a direct mail. Hey, I saw that you might be the right person. Handling note sales for ABC Bank. Do you have anything on your books you're looking to get rid of this month or this quarter?
Speaker 1:So good, all right, everybody, stop pause. Go back, re-listen to that again. Get those titles written down. If you're driving earmark this part, go back to it after you got a spot with a pen and paper, because that was just some gold right there. Carry on Scott.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the thing it's all about drip marketing. I mean, we spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and follow up with people. Hey, what do you have in your books this month? Nothing. You could also go back to the county records. If you go back to the recorder's office and just do a search for assignments assignment search in the last six months or a year ago that will tell you what mortgages have been moved from one lender to another Cause.
Speaker 2:It's not a deed, it's an assignment, a mortgage that gets recorded at transfers ownership.
Speaker 2:Okay so um, whenever I get a tape in a list and that's you know, we look at, okay, are we direct to the seller? That's important. Who's the lender on this? What's the motivation? How upside down is the bank? There's some things you can do by going to the FDICgov websites or looking at the bank's quarterly report to see how much distressed debt they have on their books residential, commercial and how much of their portfolio is distressed. Okay, and that leads to getting a better price. The more distressed they are, the better price we can usually get.
Speaker 1:Are you saying when you say the more distressed you're talking about the bank, the more distressed the bank is itself versus the actual property you're looking at Exactly?
Speaker 2:You know the mortgage is distressed, obviously, but a lot of banks when you understand banks. When they have a non-performing note on their books, they have to hold money back in reserves that they can't lend out. That's why banks will often sell to us at a discount because they'd rather get 50% of the note. Now they can go out and rinse and repeat and leverage it.
Speaker 2:10 to 15, 10 to 50 times versus holding on to this note. It's going to drag them down and they have to keep these reserves. That's the thing to look at. We don't target one-off banks because they can't take a big discount. We don't target the top five or 10 because they do want you to have $50 million. But there's a whole lot of regional banks, smaller banks, smaller mortgage companies, mortgage bankers that have stuff on their portfolio that they're motivated to move off their bank books so they can move it to somebody else and lend and rinse and repeat and lend on a regular basis.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that when you're doing the, the due diligence Scott you talked about, right, you've got the BPO, you're getting done, so you're really getting a true valuation on the property, right, are you? Are you able to go in the property ever, like, are you able to get in there and see, like, what is the condition of this thing inside? Cause that can be a big swing if you got to flip that thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's a great question and that's the number one question we get from fixing flippers, cause you gotta have the whole, I gotta see everything Right, and the answer is most of the time, no. If it's occupied, you're not going to be able to go. Knock on the door. Hey, can I walk in and see the property? You know I to be able to knock on the door. Hey, can I walk in?
Speaker 1:and see the property. I'm the bank.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, they don't do that Now sometimes now, of course, if that borrower's listed that property for sale, then you get online photos. You can finagle about that. If the borrower has passed away and it's a reverse mortgage, oftentimes HUD, before they're selling the stuff off, will go in and take photos and send in an inspection and take a look at it. You can't go knock on the door of the borrower and say, hey, I'm thinking about buying your note, can you start paying on time again? That's a violation of fair debt collection practices.
Speaker 1:Although, the CFPB is not really around to step on your toes or swat your hands.
Speaker 2:You shouldn't do that. But the thing about looking at an asset is that we're literally getting the. You know the phone conversations we're seeing hey, this borrower called in and tried to talk about doing a loan mod, or the opposite way. We called the borrower and they told us to F off. You know what I mean. That's why we sent somebody by to look at the property. Is the property in good condition exterior-wise? Is the lawn mowed? Are there toys in the front yard? Is there an American flag out in front? Is it a good neighborhood or is it the hood? Those are important things.
Speaker 2:One thing that offsets that fear of oh, I got to rehab, or if it's trashed outside, is the insurance side of the business. When we buy a non-performing note, if the borrower has insurance which we ask as part of our due diligence they don't Then what we do before we fund is we'll put insurance on the property. So if we do, when we do close on it and the borrower is not responsible, we go knock on the door. Then, if they don't answer, if it's vacant, we can actually we're allowed because we're the bank to go in, open the door, change the locks make sure to secure our investment, just like Fannie or Freddie would do on a vacant property.
Speaker 1:Any property going up for auction same look, Exactly so if it's occupied, it's great.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's where we're calling the utility department, seeing the city, and since we're the bank and the lender, oftentimes the utility departments will give us more information because we have a vested interest. Okay, so, like hey, we're the bank, we're calling to check on 123 Main Street. Corey is the borrower on this. Can you tell us if the utilities are still on?
Speaker 2:Is the water still on. Oh, it's been turned off. How long has it been turned off? What's the outstanding balance that we would need to pay you when we do that? And so they'll give us information? I had one lady like oh yeah, they were in here last week. Him and his wife were fighting. They got in a fight. We had to call the cops on them, or you know, it's been the same borrower at the house for four years. They paid on time. So that tells us a little bit about the interior condition of the property. I mean, I know we're going to. Usually, if we do take the property back, it's going to be paint, carpet, new appliances. 90% of the time you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Since we aren't targeting the property we really base our first line of return on. Is it occupied? And what's it going to look like if we can get that borrower back on track, if they just start paying? Is that a good day or is it a bad day?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and going from there, you mentioned something I think is interesting for the audience to hear. Scott, you said something about like, and maybe you can expand on this a little bit. There was something about phone records or something you get with this, where they'll actually put notes in the system on this particular borrower and you get those notes if you're doing your due diligence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's called servicing notes. So most mortgage companies are going to be servicing a note by calling if you stop paying, right, okay. So I mean we'll see the payment history. You know all that stuff in the spreadsheet. If what they paid over and that kind of things, which is really nice, but somebody hasn't paid, then we're really especially a non-performing. We're going to look at what's been the conversation. Has the servicing company been reaching out? What's the conversation been? And we'll see notes like bar called and tried to do a loan mod.
Speaker 2:Bar called and tried to do a short sale okay, you know even since we get this collateral file a lot of times, sometimes we'll even get like hardship letters that the borrower sent in. So, like one, I bought this note in south beloit, illinois a few years back. Where the file went. Uh, the scan file was thousands and thousands of thousand pages like why is this collateral file so thick? You know, and turned out this loan had been sold like five times over four years and the lady was trying to do a loan mod and so she was faxing in her w-2s, her hardship letter, her bank statements, all the stuff, trying to get a short sale approved okay and every time she did the note would be sold to somebody else, so she'd have to do the whole thing again, oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:So when I saw this I was like, oh, I'm like they owed 60. The house would maybe be worth 36. It wasn't that high value asset, but they were willing to sell like 30 cents on the dollar of what they figured, 36 cents on the dollar of what was owed.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry of the value of the property, 60 was owed, 36 was the value, so they sell the note to me for 12 and her monthly payment was like 452 a month and I'm like, look, I'm like this lady's been trying to do a loan mod for four years.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:She's lived in it for 18. In her hardship letter she literally we raised our three daughters here, my husband had a heart attack, has been out of work. She literally said I can't bring the full four years or five years of back payments to the table, but I can start making on-time payments. I get paid a little bit extra. She literally even outlined this in the hardship letter. I'm like I'm buying this note, so we bought it for 12. The day after we funded on it I called her up and her name was Sheila and William was her name. I'm not going to say the last names, but I can remember talking to Sheila. She picks up the phone. I say hello, sheila, my name is Scott Carson. I'm in reverse acid fund. I'm calling about your property and she's like oh, my God, yeah, so well, we just bought your note.
Speaker 2:She's like oh, you can literally just like, oh, shit, I don't have to go take it again and I like, listen, I understand, you've been trying to do a loan bonus for a while. She's like, yeah, yeah, I said it looks like your loan's been sold like four times in five years. She's like, yeah, I said, first of all, how is your husband doing? How is William doing? Is he back to work? She's like, oh, you actually read my hardship letter? I'm like, yes, I did. Is he back to work?
Speaker 2:Yes, you owe 60. The house is 36. We know you owe 60 because you pulled a little cash out when the value went up a little bit. You know Southport is a little white house, you know I said what did I say? I said this is going to be a good day. Can you start paying at $450 to a month? She's like, yes, I could do that. Can you bring $5,000 to the table? You know it's a full year. She she was behind by five years. She was like, oh, I can't bring five. I said, well, can you bring 2,500 to the table?
Speaker 1:She's like.
Speaker 2:I can do that. I said can you pay an additional 200 per month on top of your 452? She's like yes, I can do that. I said okay, this is what we're going to do. You bring 2,500 to the table to my attorney's office about an hour south of you. You're going to start making a 652 payment for the next year. After 12 months of on-time payments. We're going to appraise your property and we're going to reduce what you owe down to the true value. So if it goes from 36 to 30, I'll drop your balance to 30. If it goes from 36 to 45, we'll drop it from 60 down to 45 for you. So we'll even take off some of that negative equity. She's like are you serious? She's like yeah, and here's the kicker for you, sheila, you do this on time. For 12 months, I'm going to drop your interest rate from 9.9% to zero. She's like what are you talking about?
Speaker 2:I said zero and we want to make on time payments for months and we'll drop it down because that way you will have the house paid off in 72 months instead of 33 years, and I didn't want to own this $36,000 asset, right, but I wanted to make it good. So if you figure the numbers, I paid $12,000. I basically got 90% of my money back in that first year and then she paid on-time for six years, never missed a payment. If she was going to be like a day late, she would call me like Sheila, you don't have to call me, call the servicing company who you're mailing the checks to. And 12 months after we modified, dropped it to zero.
Speaker 2:It was like around Christmas time. I got a Christmas card from her and her family. It was a picture of the whole family and I noticed that one of her daughters in there had a baby, okay, and I noticed that one of her daughters in there had a baby, okay, and she's like. We just want to say thank you for allowing us to stay in the house and working with us. Our daughter, our oldest daughter, who she raised here, had her first child and we named it Carson after her. No, come on, dude.
Speaker 1:Seriously, did that get you teared up, brother? Oh my God, I get chills every time I tell this story, man. Yeah, dude, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:You know we have the ability to help people stay in their houses. We prefer that. I want to About 70% of the time we keep people in the house. I mean, look, I'm a capitalist pig, just like everybody else I want to make a good return.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know I made 85% year one on that deal with Sheila and I think I made like 20% going forward after that first session. She made a ton of money. I mean there's one lady who was a single mom of four kids in Cleveland. Her house was a POS. I mean I didn't want to own it but her husband left her and all this stuff. She's trying to raise four kids but trying to go to nursing school, okay. And so we literally forgave her $20,000 of what she owed on this property and just deeded her the property, the release of lien.
Speaker 2:I says Merry Christmas, happy New Year. I paid like a grand for it because it was part of a bulk deal. I was like I'll just write that off. I mean I'm not worried about that, I don't want to own that. That's the beautiful thing about helping people. Now, sometimes people are just scumbags. We bought one down near Miami a couple years back. The house was worth. We bought about a million. They owed 1.2 on it. They hadn't paid in four years, doing every crazy trick in the book they could to delay the foreclosure process, because Florida is about a 12-month process to foreclose in a good time.
Speaker 2:Well, guess we bought this note at 440. Borrower was playing tricks, then COVID kicked in.
Speaker 1:That delayed foreclosures.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a big delay, that kind of. We didn't expect that. So it took us another two years to foreclose, two and a half years to foreclose. We finally foreclosed. We took the property back. They'd moved out, it was immaculate property but they took about $50,000 worth of rehab, dupliances and some other stuff, but we listed it for $1.25.
Speaker 2:We sold it for $1.1 with an offer basically in 10 days, and when you add in legal fees of two years and going back to shenanigans, our cost basis was closer to about $800 on that, oh my goodness. So back of shenanigans. Our cost basis was closer to about $800 on that, oh my goodness. Still a very good day on stuff like that. You got to expect that you start getting higher valued assets. Borrowers are going to hire attorneys to delay foreclosures and expect that.
Speaker 2:We like to find that really the cookie cutter. The best bang for your buck is going to be from that. Really $100,000 up to about $250,000 price range for the most part. If you want to turn into cash, you can buy stuff less than that. Contract for deeds we buy a lot of those as well too. For cash, sure, but really anything above that you're probably going to have to foreclose for the most part Okay, okay, got it.
Speaker 1:Wow, man, that is crazy. So you guys bought it. For what did you say $440,000 on that $441,000. And you racked up what was that? Almost like $350,000?.
Speaker 2:Well, I take that back. Our payoff was that because we did have an investor funded to the deal at 12%.
Speaker 1:So he funded the deal.
Speaker 2:And that was with interest. But we did have roughly, golly, we had $75,000 to $100,000 in attorney fees for just holding and go on that route during the process. So but we knew that I was like, when we buy this, this guy is going to probably drag it out another two years. And then COVID kicked in. I was like, oh, thanks God. But we knew we bought it right. You know like, okay, I'm, I'm willing. You know, we had the attorney review, all the legal beforehand. So they said, yeah, this is, guys, just a creep, he's going to drag it out, he's going to play on it. He showed up, said he was dying of cancer. Then he showed up to the judge and said he didn't speak any English, which was out in the lobby speaking fluent English. There's some scumbags out there. I don't mind foreclosing on those folks, yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:Talk about real quick, scott, I want to go into short sales real quick. So first of all, for the audience that is not familiar with short sales, these were big back in 2010 to 2016,. Really, we don't really see much of them anymore. But can you just explain what is a short sale in general terms?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So short sales, I mean we're starting to see more come back though in different markets because of values kind of depreciating a little bit or markets kind of coming back Like Austin we've had a little bit. Or markets kind of coming back Like Austin. We've had a little bit of, they say, a crash but its value has kind of dropped down 5%, 10% negative growth for the last year or two because of the market.
Speaker 2:But a short sale is where a borrower owes more on their property than the property's worth. So let's just go back to that same number we gave. So it's a $200,000 house. That's what the value is right now. If they haven't paid in a year, or maybe the market dropped, maybe they owe $225,000. Okay, and they don't have the $25,000 in change in their pockets to pay at closing to sell that property. Right, we've always got to figure about 9% to 10% for closing costs and commissions on a property anyway. Yep, so if we bought that note at $100,000. Okay, I'm the bank, I can kind of help determine the short. You know me taking a short really isn't me taking a short. But a short sale is where the borrower or the it works with a realtor to go to the lender and say, hey, borrower's in trouble, borrow can't pay. We'd like to try to sell this property below what's owed on a technical kind of short Right, so the lender has to approve.
Speaker 2:You often see these lists in the MLS as third-party approval required. They should be listed no more at 85, 90 cents of the dollar because you want to get foot traffic in People looking at it. If they're going to have to wait around for a short sale to take place for 90 days of going back and forth negotiations, you want to do it at a discount. Me, if I buy a note and I see it's listed for sale or the bar wants to list it, I'll buy. No, okay, I bought it at $100. Okay, I'll let you list it for $180. It's worth $200. I'll let you list it for $180. Let's get multiple bids to bid it up to $190, $195.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll gladly take a short of $30K $40k off what's owed, because I know I'm gonna make 70 80 in the back end, right.
Speaker 1:What's interesting is I think you're playing chess when, when other people are playing checkers here with this, because where I'm going with this is uh, we, we run into this, you know not often, but I would say at least once a quarter, maybe twice a quarter. One of our, one of our sellers is in a predicament where they owe. We just had one down in the Milwaukee area. They owed 170. We put it out to the buyers list just trying to help them more than anything for, like, I think it was like 175. Like, our normal spread on deals is 20 plus. We're not trying to take anything less, but this we're like let's just see if we can help out.
Speaker 1:Couldn't get anybody to buy it at those numbers. We had it set up that they could do subject to, so they could take over the mortgage, catch them up on payments, like we had all these options right, try to help these people out. Nobody was biting Right. So we went to to a realtor that we know that does some short sale negotiations and they tried and the bank wasn't willing to do really much on it.
Speaker 1:I don't remember, I don't remember. But what I think is interesting is you're you're kind of bypassing that step. It seems like of let's go through the realtor to try to negotiate with the bank and try to do a short sale here on the borrower's behalf, and you're going to the bank and providing value and saying, hey, you've got this distressed asset, I'll take it off your plate for you at this, versus just them going through this, because most of the short sales I've run into is like if you're less than 80% of what they perceive the value at, they're not willing to play ball. Where you're getting them at 40% to 60%, it sounds like.
Speaker 2:It just varies. Yeah, vendors on a lender-by-lender basis If there's a ton of equity, we're not going to get it.
Speaker 2:We'll probably get a comment at 90 cents of what's owed, even if there's a ton of equity. Okay, you know we don't chase equity a lot of times. Now we did have. We had one deal recently. The borrower was in the house. A little old lady had been in the house by herself for 15 years. The house was worth $450. She only owed like $175. Okay, and I think we paid like $125, $150 for the note. It was still a pretty good deal. In Texas we can foreclose quickly. I'm like well, if we foreclose, we're going to get $175,000. That's about $50,000 before we pay our investors off. I said we're probably going to get outbid at the auction. There's no way we're going to end up taking this asset back at $450,000, which would be great because we could make a ton.
Speaker 2:So what we did is we bought the note. We want to go. She's like well, I don't want to stay, but I'm worried, I don't want to Nestle. I mean, she's old enough she could have done a complete reverse mortgage and stayed in the house. We could have stayed, we could have offered that. Didn't want to do that.
Speaker 2:I said okay, what if we do a friendly foreclosure? She goes what do you mean by that? I said how about we give you some cash to walk so we avoid it going to the foreclosure auction and getting outbid and somebody else making the lion's share of the profit? So she's like what do you have in mind? I said well, we went back to Heaton a little bit. I said how about we give you $75,000 to sign the property over and walk away? And she's like that would be great. So we gave her a grand to sign, got her out of the house, got her into an apartment. She still had some money and some friends. We got into that. Then, since we were the bank, she deeded the property back to us. So now we didn't have to worry about foreclosing because we did a friendly foreclosure with her, put 20 grand, rehab, paint, carpet, new appliances, enlisted it for 450. And it got a full price offer in seven days.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, so we ended up making more money on the on the backend side of that versus just the 50 grand. And we actually did some good, gave her some cash because, right, it's a thing Not everybody would have done that. Most people would just foreclosed and she wouldn't probably not gotten anything at the option Right Um, and run that risk. In this way we were able to help a lady out, uh, make some lemonade out of lemons. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I love it, Cause what you're able to do is everybody's winning. That's always what I always say is a great real estate transaction was. Everybody leaves that that table feeling like they all won right In some aspects, right. Nobody's feeling like they got taken advantage of or anything like that. And and in our business, in the wholesale business, you know that can sometimes some some, you know you meet with the sellers, then they get sad or somebody talks to them and then they want more money and that's when sometimes our deals can get a little messy.
Speaker 1:But typically these people are thanking us up and down at the closing table and they're excited and we're excited. And sometimes real estate agents that I talk to they think we're the scum of the earth and we're ambulance chasers and all this stuff. They don't understand. They don't get to see these sellers in tears when they're getting this problem property off their plate and they didn't have to go through the traditional route and that kind of thing. And you're doing the same thing with notes here. It sounds like you're able to come into a position where somebody's stressed out of their mind about getting foreclosed on and what it's going to do to their credit and are they ever going to be able to get a place and blah, dah, dah, dah dah and you and make a profit for you and your investors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I mean. That's the thing I mean. If you think about what damage a foreclosure does, not only to a block but a market, it really depreciates the whole block $10,000 in value on a foreclosure, or more, depending on what happens at the auction. We're able to kind of keep that up Instead of foreclosing. We can still do a friendly foreclosure and then the price isn't listed anywhere and then selling it at full value after we cleaned it up boosts the actual economy, boosts the valuation and stuff like that. But there's still people that you know we still have to foreclose on 25, 30% of the time. They don't want to work with us, they don't want to communicate. I had a guy just recently called me the week after the foreclosure auction. Isn't it always when people call off a foreclosure list, they call the week after the auction? Hey, I need help.
Speaker 1:It's too late. Now I want to work with you. It's like well, buddy, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:It's too late. I'm like man you didn't communicate with us for two years.
Speaker 1:I said I'm not, I don't feel sorry for you.
Speaker 2:I'm like I'm sorry man, I don't feel sorry for you. We sent out door knockers. We flew a plane by.
Speaker 2:Please call us at this number Unfortunately and that's the thing is too people always ask me what does the market foretell? Are we going to see more foreclosures? You're not going to see foreclosures. You're going to see more things where banks are selling the portfolios of the debt off to investors like me because they don't want to be on the hook for the foreclosures and it costs them a lot more to rehab the property. It's vacant for a while. A vacant property is a non-performing asset.
Speaker 1:Banks don't really want to own foreclosures, whether you believe it or not, they learned that in 2008. They don't want to own them, nope they do not want to own them.
Speaker 2:Nope, they do not want to own them. Calling the bank, say I want to buy Arias, they're just going to send you to a voicemail box. But if you reach out to the right department of the banks, like I said, and say, hey, I want to buy your non-performing notes for my own portfolio I mean you can wholesale notes just like to hear you say, hey, we're trying to keep people in their houses. If they won't play ball, obviously we'll foreclose and go that route. But since we're kind of that smaller war dogs living on crumbs kind of mentality aspect, we have a lot more flexibility in what we can do and some more options that we can offer the borrower to try to work with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome, scott. Well, somebody wanted to get some help on this stuff, scott, because this is awesome. This podcast has been great. This is one of my favorite episodes so far, because I'm learning a ton about this whole different world in real estate. I know you have Monday nights. Are you still doing the Monday night program?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've got a ton of videos. We've got the number one YouTube channel, number one podcast out there with the Note Closers show, stuff like that. We broke down 187 notes last Monday night for people to take a look. We're only one of the few people out there that actually will bring up a tape and literally go through hey, here's where the deals are, here's the duds. Avoid this and avoid that.
Speaker 2:We've got a free course, a free three and a half hour course for you to learn about the basics of note investing. If you're interested, just go to noteweekendcom. You can register. It'll send you the reply. I actually just taught it live this last Saturday for three hours to people on how to find, fund and flip these deals. And then, of course, we have quarterly classes and coaching and stuff like that Awesome. If you've really liked this, you can use your IRA, you can use OPM. Don't let what you have or don't have in your checking or savings account stop you from doing, because there's a lot of good deals out there and you and I both know, corey, we wouldn't be where we're at if we just try to use only our money over the years, right you?
Speaker 1:know, use other people's money. So that's right. That's right, I mean. I think that's such a great, great point to make, because I think that's one of the limiting factors when, for 99 of people, not we don't have rich uncles who gave us a bunch of cash and we weren't blessed with trust funds. It's all self-made. And you got to realize I wouldn't own over 100 doors just with cash that I had sitting in the bank. It doesn't happen without using private money or leverage or creative financing or community banks that will fund it all. There's a million different ways to do it. So if you've got grit and you've got a strong intensity to change your life, it's all about getting connected with the right people who've already done this before, and Scott's one right here that we've we're bringing to you guys today on the Wisconsin investor that he can help you guys and guide you, and I'm definitely going to be going out there to note weekendcom and I'm going to be getting myself that little three and a half hour course and well, you and I have already talked.
Speaker 2:Anything I see up in your neck of it's Green Bay, wisconsin or Milwaukee, I'm going to shoot it to you. Let's go, buddy, and partner up with you on some of these deals. For you, we'll do a little case study.
Speaker 1:then, scott, we'll promote that baby out to the audiences and show them how we do it. Go from zero to one. Let's do it, man. If somebody wanted to get in touch with you, scott, what's the best way? If?
Speaker 2:you go to our website weclosenotescom is always the easy spot there or you can always book a call directly on my calendar on there by going and just booking a call with me or going to talkwithscottcarsoncom. That'll take you directly to my calendar and book a phone call, and I'm always glad to let you pick my brain for 30 minutes or ask me questions. It's a great thing. It's not for everybody. I'll tell you that right now. If you're an engineer and have an engineering mindset, you might freak out all the different opportunities, structure and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:The riskiest part of note investing is making sure you're buying the right price. Never buy a note you don't want to end up owning. Always check taxes, always check title. If you do those things, you're going to be pretty well off because most times you're buying at a discount. Worst case, you sell the note to somebody else and get paid back and moved on. There People screw up because they come from. I got to do everything myself. I got to handle the workout. I got to try to handle foreclosure. I'm like no, no, no. Pay the 90 bucks a month to a servicer, pay the attorney their two grand or whatever. Let them foreclose and let's move on.
Speaker 1:You don't run a charity.
Speaker 2:You donate to charities because people will try to drag the shit out. Oh, you don't want to foreclose on me?
Speaker 1:Yes, I do you no, pay you, no stay. You know what I mean. I love it, man. Well, we've been talking a lot on the recordings lately about one of my favorite books who, not how, and that's what it sounds like as we were talking. I'm like, well, this sounds like a who thing. I could get a VA. My brain is going like I could get a VA to get all the basic stuff. Then all I got to do is make the final decision. Then we got a servicing company, a title company. It's just a who thing. Help structure that for anybody who's interested in.
Speaker 2:So it's pretty easy.
Speaker 1:Scott, we always wrap up with a with, with a little fun question here, and I know I prepped you a little before this because you're from Austin, texas, but you did have a pretty good one when I asked you the final question the favorite place to visit or Wisconsin tradition. Tell the audience a little bit about what you got here, man.
Speaker 2:So my family's originally from the land of 10,000 lakes, your neighbor you know to the. West Minnesota. You know I was born in Rochester and Stewartville and stuff like that and I'm actually going back up there here in a couple of weeks. But one of my favorite memories as a young kid I love apples, I love fruits going to an apple festival right on the border. We're in Wisconsin, some city named last Valley you mentioned it and I think Hudson.
Speaker 2:I think Hudson Valley and I remember walking through this apple festival and there's literally like hundreds of booths of apples. It was like I remember eating so many apples I got sick on the way home and stuff like that. But you know, my mom and I got an uncle that lives in Wisconsin and you know there's nothing beats good cheese curds. It's just one of the great things. When you get a good cheese curd up there, the milk tastes different. You know, when you get a good cheese curd up there, the milk tastes different. Just the greenness of it. The farmers in the dairy land up there are the salt of the earth. We've got to protect those folks.
Speaker 1:I agree 100%. I agree, guys, if you've got some value out of this and you want to help the audience or help other people get started in real estate, share the episode. Guys, go out and follow Scott as well. I mean he's got tons of great like. If you don't know where to start, this guy's got a ton of content he's cranking out so you will not fall short of any kind of education gap here. If you follow Scott, so go follow him on his different platforms and on the links that he gave us.
Speaker 1:We'll put all those in the show notes as well. So if you forgot all those, we'll have those in there. And then if you guys share this episode, remember that's going to help you guys raise private money. It's going to help people tell you what you're into. They're going to know you're into real estate investing and you're going to start more conversations. That is ultimately going to help you build your network out there.
Speaker 1:So if you're not ready to get on the buyer's list, like I mentioned at the start, but you do want to just start having some conversations like this, obviously Scott made a generous offer today we're also willing to help have some conversations about how to help you get started here in Wisconsin on some of your real estate investing. You can just go to the wisconsindiscountpropertiescom website, just go to the Contact Us page or give us a call on the website on top and we'd be happy to have that conversation. If you're not quite ready to start evaluating deals yet, scott, this has been awesome man. I appreciate you being on, brother. Any last words for the audience here before we roll.
Speaker 2:Just get out for your ass and take some action. You know, no matter what it is, reach out. Those that are most successful are the ones that are most giving of their time to help ensure you, make sure that you avoid the pitfalls or the hurdles that we hit when we get started.
Speaker 1:Yep, awesome buddy, appreciate you being on. Thanks guys for listening. We'll see you on the next episode.
