How First-Time Note Investors Successfully Purchase Their First Mortgage Note | Real Estate Notes Show

Episode: Note Investing: An Note Investor Journey of Purchasing a Mortgage Note Dave's Goals and Plans: - Streaming live on Facebook group and LinkedIn - Has free YouTube channel for note investing content - Sharing stories of first-time note investors and their purchase journeys - JKP Holdings website available at jkpholdings.com Key Recommendations: - Work with brokers or established agencies rather than individuals for first note purchases - Research sellers through online communities and Facebook groups to verify legitimacy - Use platforms like PaperStack for clear guidance on next steps and timelines - Start with lower balance notes to gain experience before scaling - Have a mentor or established connections to access curated asset lists Topics Discussed: - First-time note investor experiences and emotional challenges - Where to find mortgage notes (PaperStack, NotesBank, Facebook groups, brokers) - Identifying legitimate sellers vs.

scams - Due diligence process for evaluating notes - Filtering criteria for note selection - Timeline and process of making offers and closing Guest Insights: - Maria (clinical research background): Attended month-long workshop focused on second non-performing mortgage notes, bought first two notes together that met criteria - Larisa (financial software/stay-at-home mom): Found note investing through BiggerPockets forums, worked with mentor for guidance, preferred broker connections over individuals - Brian (truck driver, 20+ years): Consumed 40 hours of podcasts weekly, did private loan through self-directed IRA first, recently sold rental property, now focused exclusively on notes [Music] [Music] hey everybody dave puts here from jkp holdings we have a special guest today more than one and uh what we're going to be doing is introducing some new investors who've uh been in the space for millions of years right um actually not so alongside me we have a few special guests here really brand new to the space of no investing um something we haven't done in a while but we wanted to kind of share with everybody what it's like to go through your first asset purchase and it's nervous it's scary we don't know where to go where to turn where to look for assets what we're trying to do today is kind of share other stories of their first purchase of their first maybe one or two purchases what their story what was the journey like um and kind of relate to things like that so it's pretty interesting to see that this is gonna be something that we've not done before um and we look forward to hearing from people so again dave putz here from jkp holdings uh we're streaming live the facebook group as well as linkedin um you can take a look at us on jkpholdings.com and we also have a free youtube channel so take a look at that sharing like and all that good stuff from there so today uh i have brian louisa i'm maria as well so welcome guys i appreciate you jumping in on a friday afternoon uh morning for some of you guys um and joining me today to kind of share your journey of note investing so welcome i want to start off with asking you guys what your background wants i know you guys are all gurus and real estate and everything else you've done a million deals and everything else and you've converted over to notes to take over the world so what's up maria what was your background what is your what's your history like what'd you get into how did you get into notes all right well hi everyone my background is in clinical research and so i've been doing that for the past five years but just recently you know i was curious i needed something else so um and [Music] [Music] hey everybody dave puts here from jkp holdings we have a special guest today more than one and uh what we're going to be doing is introducing some new investors who've uh been in the space for millions of years right um actually not so alongside me we have a few special guests here really brand new to the space of no investing um something we haven't done in a while but we wanted to kind of share with everybody what it's like to go through your first asset purchase and it's nervous it's scary we don't know where to go where to turn where to look for assets what we're trying to do today is kind of share other stories of their first purchase of their first maybe one or two purchases what their story what was the journey like um and kind of relate to things like that so it's pretty interesting to see that this is gonna be something that we've not done before um and we look forward to hearing from people so again dave putz here from jkp holdings uh we're streaming live the facebook group as well as linkedin um you can take a look at us on jkpholdings.com and we also have a free youtube channel so take a look at that sharing like and all that good stuff from there so today uh i have brian louisa i'm maria as well so welcome guys i appreciate you jumping in on a friday afternoon uh morning for some of you guys um and joining me today to kind of share your journey of note investing so welcome i want to start off with asking you guys what your background wants i know you guys are all gurus and real estate and everything else you've done a million you know wiring the money was easy or you know blindly right that's the first time you do things um running numbers was easy what was was there anything easy or hard that stood out like that was the hardest part of the process for you um the hardest part of the process was that fear because i didn't have help with the collateral file at first so i was afraid that to miss something you know like what if i missed something and then that you know i threw the entire process off or you know but it it turned it ended up working out and wiring the money was definitely easy as soon as i i contacted the bank and they just walked me through that process um the number part was fine i didn't have too much of a hard time with that because i had that set up too and um yeah it was definitely an experience but i didn't get stuck too much i had the resources to make it pretty smooth okay yeah what was your experience right was there something that stood out that was easy um i mean honestly i was pretty hand held my mentor's amazing and so any questions i had he was like right there so it went really smoothly and even he was like well that was the smoothest i've probably ever experienced so probably have it coming for me but um it was just every step was just outside my comfort zone you know like even making the bid or you know like each step was just a little bit of discomfort to work through but then now i feel confident on the other side to say yeah i can do this like even you know called a real estate agent to give me like a cma and all that was just brand new to me so being on the phone right getting their phone they're going this property's not listed for sale what do you mean yes buying it yeah they're like what are you talking about figured like from my first experience i would like to you know to get started with at least where there's already a system set up and i'll just follow yes yeah what was your story like what was your first note where did you find it what'd you look for how did you go across that all right so i was oh wait let me see but lewis what was her story what was her background what did she get to where did she find her first stuff um so i mentioned i've been working with a mentor so i definitely have been browsing like all the online resources paper stack was mentioned um things like that um but through networking and with through my mentors actually where i got my first note from so he had like resources and um people that he already had connections with and was able to find one it was a list of assets so we looked through them and found one that met my criteria um and that the person that that i bought it from was also a well-known name that i had heard of through just like online communities and things um so that felt like a safe place definitely a fear to to come across someone who isn't legit and i kind of have like at least a plan in place to do a little research on a person just like through the community forums facebook group see if they're active see if they're out there or anything like that are they legit right are they who they say they are right so when you went through that process what was some of the things you learned through that process well leading up to it i felt like i had a pretty good grasp of like what the process would be like just from research and everything but you never know until you actually do it sure um so that was a really great learning experience just to go through the actual process but um i guess just the order of events like once you make the bid and then whether they counter or accept and then um like reviewing the full collateral and um i don't know like the time frame that those things actually take you know days or weeks or things like that it was interesting to go through the actual process i guess so brian what was your experience like finding that first asset did you go through multiple assets to get to that one or did you find that first one and jump on top of it like dude was it something you liked about it you just went over and grabbed a hold of it i looked at a lot of resources first like you get on email lists and you know the occasional tape that you get sent to you but that seems daunting and overwhelming you know it's just a list of addresses and unpaid balances and it's like where the heck do i start and so when i first started looking through online resources uh fci was still i had a portal for buying notes and then i was looking at notes direct as well yep and but then again with notes direct it was like okay now i can at least see a picture of it but it still seems like where's the rest of the information and what what's my next step from there and then um uh i did see got onto paper stack and that just seemed like for the newer note investor that it could guide you through and this is your next step i love their timeline you know this is what's what goes now and the buyer has to do this seller has to do this and so i would look a lot on paper stack because i knew i had a good deals and everything else and you've converted over to notes to take over the world so what's up maria what was your background what is your what's your history like what'd you get into how did you get into notes all right well hi everyone my background is in clinical research and so i've been doing that for the past five years but just recently you know i was curious i needed something else so um and you know everyone talks about real estate you know it's a good investment and everything so i you know i started doing my research about a couple years ago and i thought about you know the natural like conventional real estate methods but like you know i it really appeals to me and then i came across the idea of notes and so i attended a workshop that lasted about a month and so then i i knew that it's something i would i could see myself doing so that's just how i started and just from there and then it was it was so well structured and everything was laid out so perfectly for me and so i figured that why not why not continue it and the workshop was based basically on um second non-performing second mortgage notes and so i just i just went on with that and i thought it was great yeah cool awesome lisa what was your experience how did you get introduced to it what were you doing before that can you share a little about that yeah my name larisa and i am a stay-at-home mom i worked in the financial software uh business or industry i guess for like 10 years before i started staying home with my kids um a couple years ago we decided to travel full-time and so we live in our rv and traveled around so when we did that i rented out my house in oklahoma and we so kind of like stuck my toe in the water for real estate um being a landlord but um it's not my favorite activity being a landlord but i thought i wanted to do something like that similar to what marie said and so i joined like the bigger pocket forums and um was following that and that's where i saw the node investing and i took a deep dive researching that for several months just trying to gather everything i could i did join like attend a couple of like weekend workshops and yeah i mean from there i did i did reach out i found a mentor that i've been working with to kind of like take me to the next to the next level but that's where i'm at right now awesome brian what was your background before getting into notes and how did you get into notes thanks dave um thanks for having me too uh i'm a truck driver by trade i have been for 20 plus years and during that time i was consuming a lot of content on podcasts and such in real estate and in 2018 i talked my father into my parents into buying a rental property and i would manage it and during that time as well i was also learning about notes i did a private loan to a friend of mine uh basically a debt consolidation loan if you will through my uh self-directed ira and then also with the intent of getting into to uh real estate notes okay as well just i was listening about 40 hours of podcasts a week on all sorts of uh topics but mainly real estate you know side hustle that sort of thing and so the rental property actually we just sold that uh earlier actually a month ago yesterday and was able to put a nice check in my parents hand for that thanks to the current market and so now i'm uh focused all all on notes now okay awesome so maria where did you begin looking for notes and then one of the first questions would you guys where could i buy a note from where how did you go through that process what was some of the things you started off with and looking for where did you find the first assets okay so during my workshop at the end of my workshop they provided a list of sites to look for notes so so that's that's pretty much how i started i just followed those links and followed those uh looked on those websites including paper sack was one of them and um when the one i actually ended up buying my notes from was a site that didn't have the notes listed i just signed up for you know whenever they have notes available they would email them to me so that's how i ended up finding my notes but i i did look there was a i had a list of cycles i had it i had it made pretty much so it's so weird because finding an asset once you get stumble across them you start saying oh i can find them all over the place but i also find the problem is that we once you start looking you get everyone in the world that has a note and they don't all have notes some are brokers right what did you get there's release where would you go to their process of making sure you're buying from a legit seller um like that's hard right that's figuring did you come across a lot of people saying i have a note for sale and you found out they didn't so i didn't i didn't go for individuals okay i went for like you know i guess agencies or like some like real estate oh what did you call them brokers brokers yeah i didn't go for individuals like i i saw some you know some people listed theirs on facebook in facebook groups and everything and nothing wrong with that but i just grasp on whether the note would make me enough money but then again it's that whole due diligence side of things so had a little bit of paralysis by analysis there and you know then i eventually just found a i had been looking at lower balance notes found one and and reached out and you know is that oh first first bid that i sent in was accepted and you know this the ball started rolling from there cool so maria when you got into that first note what about that note was something that you felt comfortable with diving more into it what was about the note was it that it was an easy detailed note was it the numbers worked well was it in a state you liked what about it was the most attractive right so i bought my first two notes together so i bought like two right off the gate and so they met my criteria as far as like they were non-performing they were second mortgage notes and the numbers did make sense and um also i was my bid was accepted at the amount that i wanted it to be accepted i mean within that range so that worked out that's why i decided to buy them so with that being comfortable so where was it that that note those two notes were you looking for that particular kind of assets and narrowed down like i'm looking for this particular thing and i narrowed everything down to a bunch that labeled this or were you open to what were your what would you narrow down from what was your filters i guess best word for it so i was looking exactly for that because that's what i was trained for and i was not willing to go off script especially not with the first um yeah so i i went exactly for that and luckily i was able to find it took a little bit of time but i you know it worked out yeah yeah so marissa what was what louise what was your what was your experience did you filter down based on the experience you had your mentor or were you given hey listen we'll look at these three you know and narrow down how was your first experience and what were you looking for um my focus right now is on performing first so that was definitely like a filter like i don't want i'm not interested in non-performing at this time um i have a handful of states that i was really focusing in on um so those are my criteria also um i have a limited amount of funds so that you know price range the unpaid balance was definitely a determining factor um it was important to me to have a certain like payments and payment amount and this one's particularly it was a re-performing note and so they had like ach payments already scheduled and so that like made me feel a little more comfortable that they felt a little more committed to be you know payments going in automatically each month so i jumped on it okay cool so that's a big thing for a lot of people is a payment amount right because your servicer killed that amount right people don't know with a hundred hurdle payment hey fellow no investor are you looking to learn the basics of note investing so you can get started however you don't want to spend a few hundreds or thousands of dollars in hours online on some training program have you thought about attending a notes conference however you don't want to spend the money or the time away from your family well we have a tremendous beginners video series of 20 different topics with each video being less than 15 minutes this means each video is less fluff and direct to the content visit www.jkpholdings.com beginner dash series to learn more again www.jkpholdings.com beginner dash series you're paying 15 20 30 a month or a 95 for now performer right and simulation if you have a hundred hour month payment here's your investment right there goes your profits that's struggling right um and we talk a lot i i know a lot of people talk in space buy based on percentages uh upv and bpo and if you run numbers based on that that all those factors don't come in but if you really run numbers based on your returns and figuring that out you realize quickly all these expenses now drop your return down and you make sure you bid based on that number now um i'm sure you guys seen our calculator and our process thing like that um but you gotta look at that kind of stuff so i hope that helps right so brian what was your first experience what was where did you you know what made these assets stand out amongst all the other ones you looked at the one that i ended up purchasing was my criteria was very wide i was looking at first seconds performing non-performing contract for deeds mortgages the uh the non-performing and marie kudos to you for going after second non-performings um to me that just seemed like if i make the investment and it doesn't work out then i'm really just out flat yeah so i focused on i ended up going with a contract for deed you know it said it was uh performing the payment exactly like you said 100 bucks a month and um to kind of fast forward a little bit after we closed on the whole thing then i got the call from the guy that um sold it to me he's like yeah i just want to touch base and tell you a little bit about the note and so i that concerned me a little bit it ended up has ended up turning out positive for the whole thing uh but those were the things that i was worried i was more focused on the the payment and thought okay 100 bucks i'll make my money back in five to six years which was decent for me uh but then again you take out that 30 bucks a month for servicing and yeah you know you're pretty much so fast forward a little bit i'm handling the payments now myself because i've contacted the borrower and that's that's been a bit of a rollercoaster too so you did it through the online portals which is really easy to use right it was different from using a spreadsheet and a lot of people who are expression friendly find it so much easier right so when you look at things like that what made what was the one thing emery i know you didn't do you know everything brian you know that but what made the way you bought it easy was there anything easy about it right what was was there something simple or was every step in education um you mean like education about like the the process yeah the process of you know was there anything that was easy like oh well you know um so yeah that was nervous that's crazy i'm not listening i'm hanging out right yeah i i got definitely like i went i think i went through four people because i they wouldn't actually respond they're like i'll get back to you it's like right so it's funny because you say that and you know working did you buy bpo no i didn't do a bpo it was performing so i just kind of wanted like uh like the cma will confirm or other properties kudos right because the cma is really the most important thing in the pictures make sure the house is standing and give me some data points right because a lot of agents don't know what anything else to do they don't understand the investment side of things um we're getting a few questions on facebook right now and you know one of the questions would ask about um what would your what was your expectation for return what was your expectation in your return annual return lisa what was that that number you were shooting for or were you just kind of hoping and praying honestly i'm kind of my range was like 12 to 16 percent is really what i shoot for okay and that's just based on you know reading articles and you know different sources giving slightly different ranges so that's just kind of where i landed okay cool brian what was your was there a spotness that was easy or hard for you that was a good education and were you shooting for a certain return on paper i saw that there was going to be a profit there my purchase price was 5400 and the unpaid balance was 77.

so i knew if it paid out i'd at least make that and it was like a nine percent note so you know i knew there was some profit there again minus the 30 bucks a month from servicing but i figured if i could have just gone through the process that first one was going to be you know just my initial jump in start to go through the steps even if it didn't make money you know i knew that down the road there'd be more that would make money so now i'm getting used to looking at a note and working with the financial calculator saying okay this purchase price is going to give me a 14 you know return yeah and so i can it's just as i build that education you know i had a broad base and now i'm you know starting to build up that that knowledge and and how to work with it and how to how to really look at it so when you looked at these assets and you figure out the numbers you're hoping for kind of figuring things out what was the biggest surprise brian that you found out that like you didn't realize didn't expect some of them were the the difference between their asking price and the unpaid balance okay and i almost went into it sometimes like why are they giving this much of a discount or this one's been on the on line for 30 days yeah there must be something wrong with it my first bid got accepted there must be you know there's a reason why nobody else is going after this one yeah so you know those thoughts you can't help but have those thoughts to go through your head it's like okay this one's been on for a month why hasn't anybody jumped on it and you kind of find out afterwards you know maybe some of the reason but uh i think i was kind of thinking about this before we got on like the steps that i took i if i was telling somebody how to go through the steps of buying a note i would tell them not to do what i did because i think i went from bid to like final accepted offer you know within a day or so and look through the digital correct collateral file i never ordered a um a title search or anything and you know so the guy that i bought it from afterwards like well i probably would have uh if i were you like okay check that box for next time and you know that i still am in contact with the guy that i bought it from first i think you know him on jamie is the guy that i bought it from and has been he's been great ever since i'll reach out to him on messenger ask him some questions and you know so it's that has been kind of funny that luckily i think it's total luck that that it has worked out the way it has for me sure um because now she now the unpaid balance is actually down to less than what i paid for it um so for for several reasons so bernie let's rewind before you bought that note your future self talking your past self what would one thing you wish you knew before making that journey through your first purchase purchases uh i wish i knew how difficult i'm going to confess now i wish i knew how difficult it was to to get the note to perform again okay because it's it's been a challenge they just it sounds easy right just get the photo on the phone get the search and perform well yeah you know like from the course that i wanted the workshop that i attended it sounded easy but like i didn't know exactly how what to expect like how it actually turned out you know in real life so now i know i'm experiencing it it's it's i know it's definitely manageable but you know it's it's taking a while to get there but you know just be patient sure yeah you know it's funny because you know some people have different experiences and for most people you know we all talk about it being possible to do a lot of things um getting a modification happened i know a bunch of people have bought notes and because the other borrower other lender didn't reach out didn't do whatever or the servicer was not that good switching it over that person called up like i've been trying to make payment forever sounds good it doesn't always happen that way right down before me so it sounds to me as you should have planned the fact of the worst case scenario being a foreclosure or not performing then hoping it performed does that make sense right because actually i i honestly maybe i should have thought about focusing ahead of time because um my goal actually was to get the note re-performing to then flip it was my exit strategy and then use that capital to purchase more loans more notes that i would keep so it sounds to me and i'm going to clarify what i'm understanding is that when we go into the mindset of this is what's going to happen right that's where you get yourself in trouble right then i'm going to go into this deal projecting out what the borrower's going to do yes exactly and this is what i'm going to be able to do right instead of saying okay what are the extra strategies that could happen it's this is the x-ray i'm targeting because this looks like a killer deal if it performs or when it performs right and we find it later it may not be as good as we hoped right in planning for the worst case scenario and hoping for the best is actually about a strategy it sounds like yeah that's definitely i definitely i'm different taking notes for the next time so luisa how about yourself what was your go back to before you bought the note and today what could you educate yourself on what is what did even educators and you know and the person who you know guide you to the process isn't in your shoes what did you learn through that process um honestly it's kind of a hard question for me i guess but um i guess really i just wish i would have started earlier i wish i would have taken that first step earlier because i learned so much in the process that i you know we all say that analysis paralysis and so i feel like i was kind of stuck in that phase for too long so i wish i just would have started before and then been that much further ahead heads it was really weird without really asking numbers let's say you spend five grand on the deal if that goes completely bonkers and whatever are you happy with the education you've got the process yes absolutely it makes you a better investor later right yeah brian how about yourself before you bought those assets today what would you wish you if you're teaching yourself what would you say to yourself forget whatever else says out there this is what you need to know for those first purchases i can i consumed a lot of content on the steps to do sure you know and and due diligence i felt would have been my my weak point because i could calculate the numbers and i was comfortable with that and then it's well i know what to do but i still didn't go through all the steps and kind of uh you know i think of the three of us i didn't have a mentor or didn't do a class it's just been you know 18 wheel university and and learn teaching myself that way so then i think oh i can just go through the steps myself and then you know to my not detriment but the one thing i wish i would have done differently is follow through with all those steps gotcha so you had the steps in line you just didn't follow you jumped them right because i i've listened to yeah all the problems many people a week yeah 20 people a week saying you know you especially i i've consumed a lot of your content dave and i love it and it's the yup you gotta do this this this and then i'd you know one two three four five and i go one three five shortcuts put in the bid right shortcuts and there are shortcuts you can take as you get more experience you know what to do right you need to talk right like somebody like dave i wouldn't do that it's not worth my time they've been buying notes as long as i have um but there are certain times it makes you feel comfortable and when we invest we want to make sure we feel comfortable we also have to be we have to understand the fact that it's an investment there's risk level and we have to take chances here so we'll get some questions here also brian go back are you using a servicer and brian you said before you're not um are you self-servicing i am on on this one both on my the personal loan that i have out the check goes to me to my self-directed but i have the records of that uh the the cfd that i have it was with one of the major servicers and at 30 bucks a month that was killing me and when i reached out to the borrower and we basically turned i didn't change any of the terms of the note just kind of verbally went from a what was going to be a five plus year note down to probably going to be paid off in 18 months that you know she's like can i just send you the checks directly supposedly she was having issues with them not you know posting her payments and that sort of thing and late payments and you know a month or two without a payment and then she'd get caught up so you know she literally cash apps me you know the payments and i have a spreadsheet that i you know uh put a line item in for the payment the first of every month i add in the interest and again i wouldn't recommend anyone do it this way but that's how it's worked out i've gotten a i have a good relationship with the borrower now and you know so it's cool it should work its way out there is what was are you using a servicer are you self-servicing and how'd you find yourself i am using a servicer i do have just a list of servicers that i've heard you know done my own research on but i decided to keep the note at the existing servicer it was a well-known one already maybe more expensive than some others that i heard but because my note was already on like an ach payment i just decided to keep them flowing and not try to disrupt that at all it makes sense right my first note i bought i kept the same servicer um because easy and you know and my first worry was well can i start an account that quickly like i bought the lawns coming to you can we get the paperwork going like yeah and you're like sure come on over you know they love having you keep the money flowing in here right so yes i i i'm thinking back i think my first notes were kind of just moved over right and then i i actually introduced myself to new servicers by doing the same process where i bought some more hedge funds or whatever and i was going to ascend that's how and just bounce around that way so mario are you using a servicer are you self-servicing i'm using a servicer yeah pre-existing servicer as well okay yeah so whoever had the paperwork before keep it there they're willing to take my business cool deal so and that's typically a problem with borrowers right if you change services they just where am i saying payable well it's ach i gotta change all my bank records like it can go now performing nothing you're not performing just that simple change it's crazy i've heard they can test you too to see see what they can get away with the one question i got here is you know when you did title search what information were you looking for the person is doing the research supply i guess the question is um on your i know brian didn't do all this right but when you did your own e report your title report what you look for in how'd you go get that tire report [Music] so i don't even think i did that step okay so yes i did that well it was provided to me and it was really it was clear okay yeah and that just you're good yes unfortunately i know i should have you know double checked on my own research now i know but i just went with that yeah how about yourself did you know any what you look for on the o e that stood out to you going because looking at a sample or being in class i've held those before where you have an o e class and you teach everyone and it's some kind of thing it's really not emotional right it's not yours you don't care you're kind of looking over and yeah when you look at that what were you looking for the main things i was looking for to make sure like the chain was clear like who had purchased it previously who the owners were and then to make sure there were no tax liens i had already looked online um i think for the county and confirmed it not but then it was nice to confirm that there were no liens okay cool did you look at anything else on that one that stood out to you um did you look at the documents attached or and all that kind of stuff it was pretty this one specifically was very like not much on it like it was pretty clear i've seen other ones that had a lot more information and i was kind of surprised that this one that didn't have very much did you check pacer at all i did not okay cool ryan how about yourself um did you go free from seeing an asset online buying it and servicing it and skipped everything else the middle or where'd you go no i had i had received the collateral file and being a cfd i did check because i think i was the at least the fourth owner of the contract so i did make sure that okay went from a to b b to c c to d then to me and there was i had the a copy of the deed in the collateral file and i think i did call the the county to see if there were any liens on it uh and they didn't have anything uh recorded on it so did you check pacer at all i did not know okay and typically cfds you're not really checking pacer really it's not a huge deal for as much because technically you're to lend it right um ideally you want to check it if you want to convert it or something right so right i'm not a big cfd person but i understand that the concepts the point so you get this electronic collateral which most people call it soft and then you get the seller and says listen wire me the money right how do you feel about wiring this person that you may have seen a video or you've talked on the phone money and you go to buy a house with your wife and your you have escrow you have this big title thing you have a table right and you get a purchase sale agreement sent to you electronically docusign says great here's my wiring trucks and send me money yeah so i asked him if i could if we could do escrow because i hadn't worked with him and this is this is one thing that i i kind of would recommend to people during the whole process of the the timeline and going through all the steps i had had some technical issues with paper stacks so i had to reach out to their support and and then to remember the name of the guy that i spoke with on there and so i had i wanted to do escrow with him and he said he's like well you know it's i usually don't like to on the the smaller balances but i haven't worked with you before so i'm cool with that i mean because it's 250 bucks on each side for paper stack to do the escrow and through my contact with support the is it is it brent at paper stack yeah okay so it was brent that i that i had been talking with and he contacted somebody else in the conversation and said oh it's this person it's his note and thought okay so if i had reached out maybe just to get a reference on who i was working with then i you know if somebody else had you know said okay yeah this this guy's legit he's okay then i wouldn't bother doing the escrow and would have been felt com would have felt comfortable with it still when you're sitting down at the bank you know getting ready to to send six grand over yeah and hoping that everything goes out yeah it's still nerve-wracking there's there's no way around that how about yourself what was your that that wiring the money the first time how'd you feel what was your feelings and i can tell you to you're blowing your faces it's okay anyone can but doing that without this typical buying a home or anything you purchase is typically a process this is a go to your bank here's my numbers and send it i mean i may have procrastinated a couple of hours yeah it was nerve-wracking for sure just still kind of doing that right like i'm wearing money to somebody you're doing what i felt it felt fancy right that's true right associate wiring money to something bad you know it's something risky yeah whatever is it why are you thinking i'm wiring a million dollars you're right fancy kind of thing and then you know ach is the kind of wire but it's we're interesting you say that because i i do agree with you right wiring is something that you didn't do as a consumer or anything you did right you may do an ach for a payment on a bill but wiring money is a fancy dancing thing that it's just interesting right like and i think i first time i bought alone i'm like i'll sing you a check you're like no we don't do shacks well um do you take cards i have a debit i was trying to avoid it probably some of the cost some of the effort and like unsure like i might walk in the bank and know what i'm saying what if i get stuck right cool and it's going to cost me 30 to send the money i didn't put that in my calculations right maria how about yourself what was your experience like sending money for the first time um so i was a little bit more confident because i was like you know what at least i'm not just sending it to someone's personal bank account you know it was like the broker i was like god yeah an established agency or company so i was like you know what i'm okay doing this so i went ahead and did it i went to the bank i couldn't do it on my own so i went to the bank and i did it i had that at least to be confident about cool yeah so the collateral file did you marie did you send it to your servicer who what happened with your collateral file so i did the opposite of what i was advised to do i kept it okay yeah so everyone she's saying is it's sitting in her house so if you want to go rob her room you know and we don't know what to do don't pay enough attention to in the education side of things that really should be taught more he said miller i could teach us now because i know it and it should be talked more about [Music] um i mean when brian was saying that about partials i was like yeah i would agree with that um i don't know how about the process of buying this is there's something missing and all this stuff going on that's not talked about a lot in the process of buying that note of either running numbers or um collateral or what to do with the files or anything like that in that process i'm drawing a blank that's okay that's right if you don't have anything it's good right it means the information's out there that's good if i made dave one thing um i had to look up some youtube videos on how to use the financial calculator and you know i'd be trying to punch the numbers in and everything's coming up zeros or errors and wasn't sure how to input the information then of course once you know you watch a few videos and you know the the switch flips you're like okay and then you know then you just run you're practicing numbers just to get used to using it and okay i can change change the the the interest rate or i can change the payment the months and all that stuff and it's really interesting how all that comes together we actually have a spreadsheet version of the calculator right where you just right it says payment i have it online um and once our portal comes out we have a spreadsheet where you just punch numbers in it'll say your p purchase amount right lpv right your interest rate your your your number of payments your xyz and it goes down and you can literally plug it in and you know what it is and the result shows up um because the calculator is right i think my first purchase um it's been seven years i think we're good is i actually once we were done with it proposed a bunny of mine jv years ago and we burnt it we literally had a bonfire and then we realized afterwards thought you shouldn't have burnt it like oh crap right we broke the entire file it was a pain above we made money we're joined and we broke it um maybe we shouldn't have done that but we had the cloud file it was i think it was sent to the attorney can we start full code right away what where's what'd you do where did like get that's one of the questions like okay here what's your address for your business what's your business name on the psa and it's like okay uh here's my writing instructions and they say who's your servicer and where do you want the cloud file what'd you say or what you do there i might have a unique it's kind of unique but i travel full-time so i have to send it to my mail service and then have it forward it to to me but i did want to look at it and so i'm i literally just got the text that it arrived at my mail service so i will have it forwarded to me but i wanted to look at it i don't know i could have probably just sent it straight to my servicer but i just wanted to hold it look at it but my plan is to send it to my servicer to have them hold it for safety okay that makes sense right you can use bank things you can get a file ball to your house i know other investors do that um but you know at the end of the day it's like listen and uh if you guys haven't gone through too much when files are needed immediately by an attorney and time is of the essence saying you're traveling or you're busy with life having that with a servicer to be able to email over and yell at them if they don't send it right is available to you and saying listen we've also sent if we know i know our friend gabe we'll send right to the attorney like listen just put the files attorney and let us sit there because i'm going to file foreclosure and i'm not sending you anything you just have everything right there um there's collateral management companies i know one of our our questions could be asking for sale is who's your collateral manager company and that's important it could be a servicer but there's also people out there who are full-time collateral management who can review that collateral file that's my next question but brian what'd you do with the clutter file when you got it i did get the hard copy of the file and it's it was kind of cool to be able to look through the hard copies as opposed to the digital stuff and uh it's at my at my house right now we got some places to go no right um and you record you record the assignments i presume right everybody yes yeah yeah i've been on the phone with the the county several times uh it was i sent the payment out to get them yep uh recorded and one of the checks was made out wrong so they sent the whole thing back to me and that was that was quite the process too i apologize i'm now reliving my first time and there was three assignments that had to be recorded from when i first bought it and i'm mailing a cover letter and saying i don't want this recording this order and they recorded it in the wrong order and then i had to go back and pay for them to redo it and i sent it another cover letter and they they reported back here it is and they recorded a different order but still the wrong order so i was with i was at a conference i was talking um kevin crude he's like yeah those stickies on every waterfall in order you want it yeah oh okay so i spent all this time money and you know effort to do all this stuff to save no money because i recorded it three times so it was crazy so when you got the collateral from maria did you send to attorney no you know brian skipped over the whole process but right when you got that cloud file did you say no attorney did you look at the cloud file yourself did you send to somebody to review how did you go through that review of the collateral so i i looked at it myself because i was i was given step by the step-by-step process to to to review the profile so like i thought i was i felt like i was you know equipped to do it but yeah you think you did a fair job yeah i think so it made sense right you know it's tough for you get that thing you see a lot of legal stuff and you've got the trainings on it but now it's yours it's yours it's your money feeling into this thing how about yourself what was you did you send it to a claudio person do you say who did you send it to to review it where you said to yourself well the physical i'm sending to myself but when i reviewed like the soft copy i felt confident with my mentor being as like a backup like i definitely did like the first review and um but like i said i just had someone right there with me okay did they help me review this yeah well i reviewed it on my own and then we kind of met and talked about it and kind of walked through and made sure i didn't miss anything but i feel like i did a good job that's awesome hey sometimes the best thing to do is to do it yourself just to learn right have somebody catch um your fall you know when we first got the cloud files we we reviewed ourselves unless something really crazy in there um or just time we'll send the software to our attorneys sometimes and to say listen just review it unless we have the time to do it then we'll read it ourselves and we'll pay the money for it or you can get a collateral management company and review it um i know it's cfd is a little different right brian did you review the collateral yourself i did yes so we have a lot of people here they're either way experienced or curious how the first time experienced people are and some people who were in the prowess of analysis what would you like from these people who've done a lot of deals to talk more about in what you've learned and for the new person what would you advise them also brian what would you advise them to know or to work on before they get to it so what would you tell somebody that's you know in a space teaching people what would you say that they need to teach more of or focus on more and for the new person what would you think that they need to learn the new person they need to learn i would say using my own experience if you're if you feel like you've educated yourself enough on it whether you have a mentor or a course or you know hundreds of hours of of content yeah at that point you you know the steps that you're supposed to be taking right and so just continue with those even if you have to write a list out and say this is what i need to do and check that off before you go on to the next thing and you know even there's lots of facebook groups out there too and you see some of them that there are basic questions that are asked and then i always felt like if i've educa if i've consumed enough content and then i'm on a facebook page and i'm able to answer the questions that people are asking and i don't always feel good about this but sometimes i look at a question and think that's a stupid question but then i catch myself because every we're all on a different timeline of where we're at so if you're if you're to the point where you're fairly educated and you're you know on facebook groups and you can answer all those questions then you need to be making the next step forward yeah and for the group for those people out there that are doing what we're doing now what should they focus on me as well what should we focus on in the education part that we really need to help with buying the first note what would be an idea of what would be something we should focus on i i think some of the documentation like i've right now i'm looking more towards purchasing a note and then selling out partials or hypothecating against it and as far as like the partials what are the documents that are needed for that okay and yeah i know with the hypothecation you can the collateral assignment and things like that but that's kind of where my step where my point is right now like okay if i went and got another note and then want to go this next step to do a partial you know then i'd kind of be walking blind again and and would need that guidance so listen what would you what would be something that you want the new person to know and what should the groovers for lack of words be talking more about that's missing um for the newer person i would say really just focusing on due diligence maybe um just making sure you know what you're looking for when you're reviewing the collateral and things like that um well i guess just making sure like the assignments are in order or and making sure that you know about any tax liens and things like that just making sure it is as it says it is before you make your purchase making sure you understand what you're looking for cool and then for the people who are teaching you you're you know someone that you're mentoring your situation your mentee what's something that they they sometimes maybe overlook or confusing right this fancy dancing thing has a bunch of symbols we've never seen before on that right then we're like so you know and we were talking i guess it was three weeks ago in our investment community group about that it's like you know it's the best way you work right the way i do things different from everyone else i'm a spreadsheet guy i like plugging things spreadsheet and getting results some people like having that physical you know instrument or a digital instrument of a calculator um i get lost on it even though i know what i'm doing i get lost on it spreadsheet's so much easier for me but find what works for you right that's the best way to do it if a calculator works great but remember the calculator only works for performance right it doesn't calculate if it goes default that's the downfall right maria have yourself what would be something you wanted you know that new investors should have known or you would say to them they were looking to get into this or buy their first note and what should you know some of the educators out there are missing on their education on buying that first note all right so the calculations definitely something that should be talked about more um during that education process and um something like that should know by buying the first note would be um practice due diligence as as much as possible you know and then and also you want to be aware of the different exit exit strategies prepare you know ahead of time for that because i you can learn from me i went in just with one strategy in mind i don't know i was 100 sure that it would work i don't know why i didn't i didn't even plan for like like a second option so like definitely have a plan b when it comes to all exit strategies yeah you know it's weird you say that because up to about i'm gonna say three years ago my calculator avoided the whole idea of reinstatement all right a little while four years ago and i avoided it until it happened and then i'm like whoa because i never think anyone reinstated i mean i'm mod everything right and reinstatement was something i didn't really count on for a long time i don't know why i did but then it happened and we realized that we we got a reinstatement amount and we the numbers ran we really were stuck because the it was like a three four percent coupon and it dropped like six and a half whatever the number was and we're like crap i can't do anything with this loan right so reinstatement was one of things we learned along the process that we missed in our calculator advanced um we i've shown before my basic beginning calculator i started jump 10 and what i have now um what a change it was strictly based on the experience where i missed where i failed you know calculating you know uh foreclosure timeline for every state this people out there still use a flat rate for foreclosure fees i don't understand why and flat time frame for foreclosures where if you're in texas versus illinois or chicago you're completely different time frames and somebody like what's five grand across the border well you try doing a foreclosure in florida for five grand it ain't happening right um so those are the kind of things that you know people miss out on and i agree with you guys um i think the calculations is huge but you have to feel comfortable with those calculations because as you go down that rabbit hole you're getting more and more like right now we're building our stash limitations in every scenarios that our calculator can tell us flagging it for status limitations issues you know because there's not every state is not same and every state's situation is different from a real estate so one may go off last payment received another maybe golf maturity one may go off of you know a uh judgment right there's one startup when did you start foreclosure every state is different scenarios which gets plugged back into the calculator which is just nuts right so awesome well this experience guys it's really cool i think this has really been helpful for a lot of people that are feeling they're alone they're like by themselves going oh my god um i don't think i can do it um as i said in the beginning you guys are all experts in real estate this is why you did it um but knowing the fact that you guys did it and you made mistakes and you learn from it um it sounds to me is that you know rule number one don't be doing this with somebody else's money when you first get in because if you're doing with someone else's money you can get yourself in big trouble right if you're borrowing money at a certain rate and you didn't know you're doing yourself in trouble because you just learn it um partner up with someone that's a great opportunity for people right um and that's challenging too for both sides right make sure you match um in our beginner series we talk about find that person because it's huge to help out but same time you got to make sure that when you do that that you match understanding the way they teach you the way they guide you and same way the other way right so awesome well again i want to thank you guys for joining us me on this friday afternoon friday morning for some of you guys um and just allowing others to listen to your journey i think it's been really cool so all right guys well thank you very much we'll be on next week as well but i really appreciate you guys coming out if you guys have any questions for you guys they're all in our facebook group and uh you know in our in our circle friends feel free to reach out to them and uh enjoy everyone thank you again for being on thank you dave i appreciate it you know everyone talks about real estate you know it's a good investment and everything so i you know i started doing my research about a couple years ago and i thought about you know the natural like conventional real estate methods but like you know i it really appeals to me and then i came across the idea of notes and so i attended a workshop that lasted about a month and so then i i knew that it's something i would i could see myself doing so that's just how i started and just from there and then it was it was so well structured and everything was laid out so perfectly for me and so i figured that why not why not continue it and the workshop was based basically on um second non-performing second mortgage notes and so i just i just went on with that and i thought it was great yeah cool awesome lisa what was your experience how did you get introduced to it what were you doing before that can you share a little about that yeah my name larisa and i am a stay-at-home mom i worked in the financial software uh business or industry i guess for like 10 years before i started staying home with my kids um a couple years ago we decided to travel full-time and so we live in our rv and traveled around so when we did that i rented out my house in oklahoma and we so kind of like stuck my toe in the water for real estate um being a landlord but um it's not my favorite activity being a landlord but i thought i wanted to do something like that similar to what marie said and so i joined like the bigger pocket forums and um was following that and that's where i saw the node investing and i took a deep dive researching that for several months just trying to gather everything i could i did join like attend a couple of like weekend workshops and yeah i mean from there i did i did reach out i found a mentor that i've been working with to kind of like take me to the next to the next level but that's where i'm at right now awesome brian what was your background before getting into notes and how did you get into notes thanks dave um thanks for having me too uh i'm a truck driver by trade i have been for 20 plus years and during that time i was consuming a lot of content on podcasts and such in real estate and in 2018 i talked my father into my parents into buying a rental property and i would manage it and during that time as well i was also learning about notes i did a private loan to a friend of mine uh basically a debt consolidation loan if you will through my uh self-directed ira and then also with the intent of getting into to uh real estate notes okay as well just i was listening about 40 hours of podcasts a week on all sorts of uh topics but mainly real estate you know side hustle that sort of thing and so the rental property actually we just sold that uh earlier actually a month ago yesterday and was able to put a nice check in my parents hand for that thanks to the current market and so now i'm uh focused all all on notes now okay awesome so maria where did you begin looking for notes and then one of the first questions would you guys where could i buy a note from where how did you go through that process what was some of the things you started off with and looking for where did you find the first assets okay so during my workshop at the end of my workshop they provided a list of sites to look for notes so so that's that's pretty much how i started i just followed those links and followed those uh looked on those websites including paper sack was one of them and um when the one i actually ended up buying my notes from was a site that didn't have the notes listed i just signed up for you know whenever they have notes available they would email them to me so that's how i ended up finding my notes but i i did look there was a i had a list of cycles i had it i had it made pretty much so it's so weird because finding an asset once you get stumble across them you start saying oh i can find them all over the place but i also find the problem is that we once you start looking you get everyone in the world that has a note and they don't all have notes some are brokers right what did you get there's release where would you go to their process of making sure you're buying from a legit seller um like that's hard right that's figuring did you come across a lot of people saying i have a note for sale and you found out they didn't so i didn't i didn't go for individuals okay i went for like you know i guess agencies or like some like real estate oh what did you call them brokers brokers yeah i didn't go for individuals like i i saw some you know some people listed theirs on facebook in facebook groups and everything and nothing wrong with that but i just figured like from my first experience i would like to you know to get started with at least where there's already a system set up and i'll just follow yes yeah what was your story like what was your first note where did you find it what'd you look for how did you go across that all right so i was oh wait let me see but lewis what was her story what was her background what did she get to where did she find her first stuff um so i mentioned i've been working with a mentor so i definitely have been browsing like all the online resources paper stack was mentioned um things like that um but through networking and with through my mentors actually where i got my first note from so he had like resources and um people that he already had connections with and was able to find one it was a list of assets so we looked through them and found one that met my criteria um and that the person that that i bought it from was also a well-known name that i had heard of through just like online communities and things um so that felt like a safe place definitely a fear to to come across someone who isn't legit and i kind of have like at least a plan in place to do a little research on a person just like through the community forums facebook group see if they're active see if they're out there or anything like that are they legit right are they who they say they are right so when you went through that process what was some of the things you learned through that process well leading up to it i felt like i had a pretty good grasp of like what the process would be like just from research and everything but you never know until you actually do it sure um so that was a really great learning experience just to go through the actual process but um i guess just the order of events like once you make the bid and then whether they counter or accept and then um like reviewing the full collateral and um i don't know like the time frame that those things actually take you know days or weeks or things like that it was interesting to go through the actual process i guess so brian what was your experience like finding that first asset did you go through multiple assets to get to that one or did you find that first one and jump on top of it like dude was it something you liked about it you just went over and grabbed a hold of it i looked at a lot of resources first like you get on email lists and you know the occasional tape that you get sent to you but that seems daunting and overwhelming you know it's just a list of addresses and unpaid balances and it's like where the heck do i start and so when i first started looking through online resources uh fci was still i had a portal for buying notes and then i was looking at notes direct as well yep and but then again with notes direct it was like okay now i can at least see a picture of it but it still seems like where's the rest of the information and what what's my next step from there and then um uh i did see got onto paper stack and that just seemed like for the newer note investor that it could guide you through and this is your next step i love their timeline you know this is what's what goes now and the buyer has to do this seller has to do this and so i would look a lot on paper stack because i knew i had a good grasp on whether the note would make me enough money but then again it's that whole due diligence side of things so had a little bit of paralysis by analysis there and you know then i eventually just found a i had been looking at lower balance notes found one and and reached out and you know is that oh first first bid that i sent in was accepted and you know this the ball started rolling from there cool so maria when you got into that first note what about that note was something that you felt comfortable with diving more into it what was about the note was it that it was an easy detailed note was it the numbers worked well was it in a state you liked what about it was the most attractive right so i bought my first two notes together so i bought like two right off the gate and so they met my criteria as far as like they were non-performing they were second mortgage notes and the numbers did make sense and um also i was my bid was accepted at the amount that i wanted it to be accepted i mean within that range so that worked out that's why i decided to buy them so with that being comfortable so where was it that that note those two notes were you looking for that particular kind of assets and narrowed down like i'm looking for this particular thing and i narrowed everything down to a bunch that labeled this or were you open to what were your what would you narrow down from what was your filters i guess best word for it so i was looking exactly for that because that's what i was trained for and i was not willing to go off script especially not with the first um yeah so i i went exactly for that and luckily i was able to find it took a little bit of time but i you know it worked out yeah yeah so marissa what was what louise what was your what was your experience did you filter down based on the experience you had your mentor or were you given hey listen we'll look at these three you know and narrow down how was your first experience and what were you looking for um my focus right now is on performing first so that was definitely like a filter like i don't want i'm not interested in non-performing at this time um i have a handful of states that i was really focusing in on um so those are my criteria also um i have a limited amount of funds so that you know price range the unpaid balance was definitely a determining factor um it was important to me to have a certain like payments and payment amount and this one's particularly it was a re-performing note and so they had like ach payments already scheduled and so that like made me feel a little more comfortable that they felt a little more committed to be you know payments going in automatically each month so i jumped on it okay cool so that's a big thing for a lot of people is a payment amount right because your servicer killed that amount right people don't know with a hundred hurdle payment hey fellow no investor are you looking to learn the basics of note investing so you can get started however you don't want to spend a few hundreds or thousands of dollars in hours online on some training program have you thought about attending a notes conference however you don't want to spend the money or the time away from your family well we have a tremendous beginners video series of 20 different topics with each video being less than 15 minutes this means each video is less fluff and direct to the content visit www.jkpholdings.com beginner dash series to learn more again www.jkpholdings.com beginner dash series you're paying 15 20 30 a month or a 95 for now performer right and simulation if you have a hundred hour month payment here's your investment right there goes your profits that's struggling right um and we talk a lot i i know a lot of people talk in space buy based on percentages uh upv and bpo and if you run numbers based on that that all those factors don't come in but if you really run numbers based on your returns and figuring that out you realize quickly all these expenses now drop your return down and you make sure you bid based on that number now um i'm sure you guys seen our calculator and our process thing like that um but you gotta look at that kind of stuff so i hope that helps right so brian what was your first experience what was where did you you know what made these assets stand out amongst all the other ones you looked at the one that i ended up purchasing was my criteria was very wide i was looking at first seconds performing non-performing contract for deeds mortgages the uh the non-performing and marie kudos to you for going after second non-performings um to me that just seemed like if i make the investment and it doesn't work out then i'm really just out flat yeah so i focused on i ended up going with a contract for deed you know it said it was uh performing the payment exactly like you said 100 bucks a month and um to kind of fast forward a little bit after we closed on the whole thing then i got the call from the guy that um sold it to me he's like yeah i just want to touch base and tell you a little bit about the note and so i that concerned me a little bit it ended up has ended up turning out positive for the whole thing uh but those were the things that i was worried i was more focused on the the payment and thought okay 100 bucks i'll make my money back in five to six years which was decent for me uh but then again you take out that 30 bucks a month for servicing and yeah you know you're pretty much so fast forward a little bit i'm handling the payments now myself because i've contacted the borrower and that's that's been a bit of a rollercoaster too so you did it through the online portals which is really easy to use right it was different from using a spreadsheet and a lot of people who are expression friendly find it so much easier right so when you look at things like that what made what was the one thing emery i know you didn't do you know everything brian you know that but what made the way you bought it easy was there anything easy about it right what was was there something simple or was every step in education um you mean like education about like the the process yeah the process of you know was there anything that was easy like oh well you know um you know wiring the money was easy or you know blindly right that's the first time you do things um running numbers was easy what was was there anything easy or hard that stood out like that was the hardest part of the process for you um the hardest part of the process was that fear because i didn't have help with the collateral file at first so i was afraid that to miss something you know like what if i missed something and then that you know i threw the entire process off or you know but it it turned it ended up working out and wiring the money was definitely easy as soon as i i contacted the bank and they just walked me through that process um the number part was fine i didn't have too much of a hard time with that because i had that set up too and um yeah it was definitely an experience but i didn't get stuck too much i had the resources to make it pretty smooth okay yeah what was your experience right was there something that stood out that was easy um i mean honestly i was pretty hand held my mentor's amazing and so any questions i had he was like right there so it went really smoothly and even he was like well that was the smoothest i've probably ever experienced so probably have it coming for me but um it was just every step was just outside my comfort zone you know like even making the bid or you know like each step was just a little bit of discomfort to work through but then now i feel confident on the other side to say yeah i can do this like even you know called a real estate agent to give me like a cma and all that was just brand new to me so being on the phone right getting their phone they're going this property's not listed for sale what do you mean yes buying it yeah they're like what are you talking about so yeah that was nervous that's crazy i'm not listening i'm hanging out right yeah i i got definitely like i went i think i went through four people because i they wouldn't actually respond they're like i'll get back to you it's like right so it's funny because you say that and you know working did you buy bpo no i didn't do a bpo it was performing so i just kind of wanted like uh like the cma will confirm or other properties kudos right because the cma is really the most important thing in the pictures make sure the house is standing and give me some data points right because a lot of agents don't know what anything else to do they don't understand the investment side of things um we're getting a few questions on facebook right now and you know one of the questions would ask about um what would your what was your expectation for return what was your expectation in your return annual return lisa what was that that number you were shooting for or were you just kind of hoping and praying honestly i'm kind of my range was like 12 to 16 percent is really what i shoot for okay and that's just based on you know reading articles and you know different sources giving slightly different ranges so that's just kind of where i landed okay cool brian what was your was there a spotness that was easy or hard for you that was a good education and were you shooting for a certain return on paper i saw that there was going to be a profit there my purchase price was 5400 and the unpaid balance was 77.

so i knew if it paid out i'd at least make that and it was like a nine percent note so you know i knew there was some profit there again minus the 30 bucks a month from servicing but i figured if i could have just gone through the process that first one was going to be you know just my initial jump in start to go through the steps even if it didn't make money you know i knew that down the road there'd be more that would make money so now i'm getting used to looking at a note and working with the financial calculator saying okay this purchase price is going to give me a 14 you know return yeah and so i can it's just as i build that education you know i had a broad base and now i'm you know starting to build up that that knowledge and and how to work with it and how to how to really look at it so when you looked at these assets and you figure out the numbers you're hoping for kind of figuring things out what was the biggest surprise brian that you found out that like you didn't realize didn't expect some of them were the the difference between their asking price and the unpaid balance okay and i almost went into it sometimes like why are they giving this much of a discount or this one's been on the on line for 30 days yeah there must be something wrong with it my first bid got accepted there must be you know there's a reason why nobody else is going after this one yeah so you know those thoughts you can't help but have those thoughts to go through your head it's like okay this one's been on for a month why hasn't anybody jumped on it and you kind of find out afterwards you know maybe some of the reason but uh i think i was kind of thinking about this before we got on like the steps that i took i if i was telling somebody how to go through the steps of buying a note i would tell them not to do what i did because i think i went from bid to like final accepted offer you know within a day or so and look through the digital correct collateral file i never ordered a um a title search or anything and you know so the guy that i bought it from afterwards like well i probably would have uh if i were you like okay check that box for next time and you know that i still am in contact with the guy that i bought it from first i think you know him on jamie is the guy that i bought it from and has been he's been great ever since i'll reach out to him on messenger ask him some questions and you know so it's that has been kind of funny that luckily i think it's total luck that that it has worked out the way it has for me sure um because now she now the unpaid balance is actually down to less than what i paid for it um so for for several reasons so bernie let's rewind before you bought that note your future self talking your past self what would one thing you wish you knew before making that journey through your first purchase purchases uh i wish i knew how difficult i'm going to confess now i wish i knew how difficult it was to to get the note to perform again okay because it's it's been a challenge they just it sounds easy right just get the photo on the phone get the search and perform well yeah you know like from the course that i wanted the workshop that i attended it sounded easy but like i didn't know exactly how what to expect like how it actually turned out you know in real life so now i know i'm experiencing it it's it's i know it's definitely manageable but you know it's it's taking a while to get there but you know just be patient sure yeah you know it's funny because you know some people have different experiences and for most people you know we all talk about it being possible to do a lot of things um getting a modification happened i know a bunch of people have bought notes and because the other borrower other lender didn't reach out didn't do whatever or the servicer was not that good switching it over that person called up like i've been trying to make payment forever sounds good it doesn't always happen that way right down before me so it sounds to me as you should have planned the fact of the worst case scenario being a foreclosure or not performing then hoping it performed does that make sense right because actually i i honestly maybe i should have thought about focusing ahead of time because um my goal actually was to get the note re-performing to then flip it was my exit strategy and then use that capital to purchase more loans more notes that i would keep so it sounds to me and i'm going to clarify what i'm understanding is that when we go into the mindset of this is what's going to happen right that's where you get yourself in trouble right then i'm going to go into this deal projecting out what the borrower's going to do yes exactly and this is what i'm going to be able to do right instead of saying okay what are the extra strategies that could happen it's this is the x-ray i'm targeting because this looks like a killer deal if it performs or when it performs right and we find it later it may not be as good as we hoped right in planning for the worst case scenario and hoping for the best is actually about a strategy it sounds like yeah that's definitely i definitely i'm different taking notes for the next time so luisa how about yourself what was your go back to before you bought the note and today what could you educate yourself on what is what did even educators and you know and the person who you know guide you to the process isn't in your shoes what did you learn through that process um honestly it's kind of a hard question for me i guess but um i guess really i just wish i would have started earlier i wish i would have taken that first step earlier because i learned so much in the process that i you know we all say that analysis paralysis and so i feel like i was kind of stuck in that phase for too long so i wish i just would have started before and then been that much further ahead heads it was really weird without really asking numbers let's say you spend five grand on the deal if that goes completely bonkers and whatever are you happy with the education you've got the process yes absolutely it makes you a better investor later right yeah brian how about yourself before you bought those assets today what would you wish you if you're teaching yourself what would you say to yourself forget whatever else says out there this is what you need to know for those first purchases i can i consumed a lot of content on the steps to do sure you know and and due diligence i felt would have been my my weak point because i could calculate the numbers and i was comfortable with that and then it's well i know what to do but i still didn't go through all the steps and kind of uh you know i think of the three of us i didn't have a mentor or didn't do a class it's just been you know 18 wheel university and and learn teaching myself that way so then i think oh i can just go through the steps myself and then you know to my not detriment but the one thing i wish i would have done differently is follow through with all those steps gotcha so you had the steps in line you just didn't follow you jumped them right because i i've listened to yeah all the problems many people a week yeah 20 people a week saying you know you especially i i've consumed a lot of your content dave and i love it and it's the yup you gotta do this this this and then i'd you know one two three four five and i go one three five shortcuts put in the bid right shortcuts and there are shortcuts you can take as you get more experience you know what to do right you need to talk right like somebody like dave i wouldn't do that it's not worth my time they've been buying notes as long as i have um but there are certain times it makes you feel comfortable and when we invest we want to make sure we feel comfortable we also have to be we have to understand the fact that it's an investment there's risk level and we have to take chances here so we'll get some questions here also brian go back are you using a servicer and brian you said before you're not um are you self-servicing i am on on this one both on my the personal loan that i have out the check goes to me to my self-directed but i have the records of that uh the the cfd that i have it was with one of the major servicers and at 30 bucks a month that was killing me and when i reached out to the borrower and we basically turned i didn't change any of the terms of the note just kind of verbally went from a what was going to be a five plus year note down to probably going to be paid off in 18 months that you know she's like can i just send you the checks directly supposedly she was having issues with them not you know posting her payments and that sort of thing and late payments and you know a month or two without a payment and then she'd get caught up so you know she literally cash apps me you know the payments and i have a spreadsheet that i you know uh put a line item in for the payment the first of every month i add in the interest and again i wouldn't recommend anyone do it this way but that's how it's worked out i've gotten a i have a good relationship with the borrower now and you know so it's cool it should work its way out there is what was are you using a servicer are you self-servicing and how'd you find yourself i am using a servicer i do have just a list of servicers that i've heard you know done my own research on but i decided to keep the note at the existing servicer it was a well-known one already maybe more expensive than some others that i heard but because my note was already on like an ach payment i just decided to keep them flowing and not try to disrupt that at all it makes sense right my first note i bought i kept the same servicer um because easy and you know and my first worry was well can i start an account that quickly like i bought the lawns coming to you can we get the paperwork going like yeah and you're like sure come on over you know they love having you keep the money flowing in here right so yes i i i'm thinking back i think my first notes were kind of just moved over right and then i i actually introduced myself to new servicers by doing the same process where i bought some more hedge funds or whatever and i was going to ascend that's how and just bounce around that way so mario are you using a servicer are you self-servicing i'm using a servicer yeah pre-existing servicer as well okay yeah so whoever had the paperwork before keep it there they're willing to take my business cool deal so and that's typically a problem with borrowers right if you change services they just where am i saying payable well it's ach i gotta change all my bank records like it can go now performing nothing you're not performing just that simple change it's crazy i've heard they can test you too to see see what they can get away with the one question i got here is you know when you did title search what information were you looking for the person is doing the research supply i guess the question is um on your i know brian didn't do all this right but when you did your own e report your title report what you look for in how'd you go get that tire report [Music] so i don't even think i did that step okay so yes i did that well it was provided to me and it was really it was clear okay yeah and that just you're good yes unfortunately i know i should have you know double checked on my own research now i know but i just went with that yeah how about yourself did you know any what you look for on the o e that stood out to you going because looking at a sample or being in class i've held those before where you have an o e class and you teach everyone and it's some kind of thing it's really not emotional right it's not yours you don't care you're kind of looking over and yeah when you look at that what were you looking for the main things i was looking for to make sure like the chain was clear like who had purchased it previously who the owners were and then to make sure there were no tax liens i had already looked online um i think for the county and confirmed it not but then it was nice to confirm that there were no liens okay cool did you look at anything else on that one that stood out to you um did you look at the documents attached or and all that kind of stuff it was pretty this one specifically was very like not much on it like it was pretty clear i've seen other ones that had a lot more information and i was kind of surprised that this one that didn't have very much did you check pacer at all i did not okay cool ryan how about yourself um did you go free from seeing an asset online buying it and servicing it and skipped everything else the middle or where'd you go no i had i had received the collateral file and being a cfd i did check because i think i was the at least the fourth owner of the contract so i did make sure that okay went from a to b b to c c to d then to me and there was i had the a copy of the deed in the collateral file and i think i did call the the county to see if there were any liens on it uh and they didn't have anything uh recorded on it so did you check pacer at all i did not know okay and typically cfds you're not really checking pacer really it's not a huge deal for as much because technically you're to lend it right um ideally you want to check it if you want to convert it or something right so right i'm not a big cfd person but i understand that the concepts the point so you get this electronic collateral which most people call it soft and then you get the seller and says listen wire me the money right how do you feel about wiring this person that you may have seen a video or you've talked on the phone money and you go to buy a house with your wife and your you have escrow you have this big title thing you have a table right and you get a purchase sale agreement sent to you electronically docusign says great here's my wiring trucks and send me money yeah so i asked him if i could if we could do escrow because i hadn't worked with him and this is this is one thing that i i kind of would recommend to people during the whole process of the the timeline and going through all the steps i had had some technical issues with paper stacks so i had to reach out to their support and and then to remember the name of the guy that i spoke with on there and so i had i wanted to do escrow with him and he said he's like well you know it's i usually don't like to on the the smaller balances but i haven't worked with you before so i'm cool with that i mean because it's 250 bucks on each side for paper stack to do the escrow and through my contact with support the is it is it brent at paper stack yeah okay so it was brent that i that i had been talking with and he contacted somebody else in the conversation and said oh it's this person it's his note and thought okay so if i had reached out maybe just to get a reference on who i was working with then i you know if somebody else had you know said okay yeah this this guy's legit he's okay then i wouldn't bother doing the escrow and would have been felt com would have felt comfortable with it still when you're sitting down at the bank you know getting ready to to send six grand over yeah and hoping that everything goes out yeah it's still nerve-wracking there's there's no way around that how about yourself what was your that that wiring the money the first time how'd you feel what was your feelings and i can tell you to you're blowing your faces it's okay anyone can but doing that without this typical buying a home or anything you purchase is typically a process this is a go to your bank here's my numbers and send it i mean i may have procrastinated a couple of hours yeah it was nerve-wracking for sure just still kind of doing that right like i'm wearing money to somebody you're doing what i felt it felt fancy right that's true right associate wiring money to something bad you know it's something risky yeah whatever is it why are you thinking i'm wiring a million dollars you're right fancy kind of thing and then you know ach is the kind of wire but it's we're interesting you say that because i i do agree with you right wiring is something that you didn't do as a consumer or anything you did right you may do an ach for a payment on a bill but wiring money is a fancy dancing thing that it's just interesting right like and i think i first time i bought alone i'm like i'll sing you a check you're like no we don't do shacks well um do you take cards i have a debit i was trying to avoid it probably some of the cost some of the effort and like unsure like i might walk in the bank and know what i'm saying what if i get stuck right cool and it's going to cost me 30 to send the money i didn't put that in my calculations right maria how about yourself what was your experience like sending money for the first time um so i was a little bit more confident because i was like you know what at least i'm not just sending it to someone's personal bank account you know it was like the broker i was like god yeah an established agency or company so i was like you know what i'm okay doing this so i went ahead and did it i went to the bank i couldn't do it on my own so i went to the bank and i did it i had that at least to be confident about cool yeah so the collateral file did you marie did you send it to your servicer who what happened with your collateral file so i did the opposite of what i was advised to do i kept it okay yeah so everyone she's saying is it's sitting in her house so if you want to go rob her room you know and we don't know what to do right i think my first purchase um it's been seven years i think we're good is i actually once we were done with it proposed a bunny of mine jv years ago and we burnt it we literally had a bonfire and then we realized afterwards thought you shouldn't have burnt it like oh crap right we broke the entire file it was a pain above we made money we're joined and we broke it um maybe we shouldn't have done that but we had the cloud file it was i think it was sent to the attorney can we start full code right away what where's what'd you do where did like get that's one of the questions like okay here what's your address for your business what's your business name on the psa and it's like okay uh here's my writing instructions and they say who's your servicer and where do you want the cloud file what'd you say or what you do there i might have a unique it's kind of unique but i travel full-time so i have to send it to my mail service and then have it forward it to to me but i did want to look at it and so i'm i literally just got the text that it arrived at my mail service so i will have it forwarded to me but i wanted to look at it i don't know i could have probably just sent it straight to my servicer but i just wanted to hold it look at it but my plan is to send it to my servicer to have them hold it for safety okay that makes sense right you can use bank things you can get a file ball to your house i know other investors do that um but you know at the end of the day it's like listen and uh if you guys haven't gone through too much when files are needed immediately by an attorney and time is of the essence saying you're traveling or you're busy with life having that with a servicer to be able to email over and yell at them if they don't send it right is available to you and saying listen we've also sent if we know i know our friend gabe we'll send right to the attorney like listen just put the files attorney and let us sit there because i'm going to file foreclosure and i'm not sending you anything you just have everything right there um there's collateral management companies i know one of our our questions could be asking for sale is who's your collateral manager company and that's important it could be a servicer but there's also people out there who are full-time collateral management who can review that collateral file that's my next question but brian what'd you do with the clutter file when you got it i did get the hard copy of the file and it's it was kind of cool to be able to look through the hard copies as opposed to the digital stuff and uh it's at my at my house right now we got some places to go no right um and you record you record the assignments i presume right everybody yes yeah yeah i've been on the phone with the the county several times uh it was i sent the payment out to get them yep uh recorded and one of the checks was made out wrong so they sent the whole thing back to me and that was that was quite the process too i apologize i'm now reliving my first time and there was three assignments that had to be recorded from when i first bought it and i'm mailing a cover letter and saying i don't want this recording this order and they recorded it in the wrong order and then i had to go back and pay for them to redo it and i sent it another cover letter and they they reported back here it is and they recorded a different order but still the wrong order so i was with i was at a conference i was talking um kevin crude he's like yeah those stickies on every waterfall in order you want it yeah oh okay so i spent all this time money and you know effort to do all this stuff to save no money because i recorded it three times so it was crazy so when you got the collateral from maria did you send to attorney no you know brian skipped over the whole process but right when you got that cloud file did you say no attorney did you look at the cloud file yourself did you send to somebody to review how did you go through that review of the collateral so i i looked at it myself because i was i was given step by the step-by-step process to to to review the profile so like i thought i was i felt like i was you know equipped to do it but yeah you think you did a fair job yeah i think so it made sense right you know it's tough for you get that thing you see a lot of legal stuff and you've got the trainings on it but now it's yours it's yours it's your money feeling into this thing how about yourself what was you did you send it to a claudio person do you say who did you send it to to review it where you said to yourself well the physical i'm sending to myself but when i reviewed like the soft copy i felt confident with my mentor being as like a backup like i definitely did like the first review and um but like i said i just had someone right there with me okay did they help me review this yeah well i reviewed it on my own and then we kind of met and talked about it and kind of walked through and made sure i didn't miss anything but i feel like i did a good job that's awesome hey sometimes the best thing to do is to do it yourself just to learn right have somebody catch um your fall you know when we first got the cloud files we we reviewed ourselves unless something really crazy in there um or just time we'll send the software to our attorneys sometimes and to say listen just review it unless we have the time to do it then we'll read it ourselves and we'll pay the money for it or you can get a collateral management company and review it um i know it's cfd is a little different right brian did you review the collateral yourself i did yes so we have a lot of people here they're either way experienced or curious how the first time experienced people are and some people who were in the prowess of analysis what would you like from these people who've done a lot of deals to talk more about in what you've learned and for the new person what would you advise them also brian what would you advise them to know or to work on before they get to it so what would you tell somebody that's you know in a space teaching people what would you say that they need to teach more of or focus on more and for the new person what would you think that they need to learn the new person they need to learn i would say using my own experience if you're if you feel like you've educated yourself enough on it whether you have a mentor or a course or you know hundreds of hours of of content yeah at that point you you know the steps that you're supposed to be taking right and so just continue with those even if you have to write a list out and say this is what i need to do and check that off before you go on to the next thing and you know even there's lots of facebook groups out there too and you see some of them that there are basic questions that are asked and then i always felt like if i've educa if i've consumed enough content and then i'm on a facebook page and i'm able to answer the questions that people are asking and i don't always feel good about this but sometimes i look at a question and think that's a stupid question but then i catch myself because every we're all on a different timeline of where we're at so if you're if you're to the point where you're fairly educated and you're you know on facebook groups and you can answer all those questions then you need to be making the next step forward yeah and for the group for those people out there that are doing what we're doing now what should they focus on me as well what should we focus on in the education part that we really need to help with buying the first note what would be an idea of what would be something we should focus on i i think some of the documentation like i've right now i'm looking more towards purchasing a note and then selling out partials or hypothecating against it and as far as like the partials what are the documents that are needed for that okay and yeah i know with the hypothecation you can the collateral assignment and things like that but that's kind of where my step where my point is right now like okay if i went and got another note and then want to go this next step to do a partial you know then i'd kind of be walking blind again and and would need that guidance so listen what would you what would be something that you want the new person to know and what should the groovers for lack of words be talking more about that's missing um for the newer person i would say really just focusing on due diligence maybe um just making sure you know what you're looking for when you're reviewing the collateral and things like that um well i guess just making sure like the assignments are in order or and making sure that you know about any tax liens and things like that just making sure it is as it says it is before you make your purchase making sure you understand what you're looking for cool and then for the people who are teaching you you're you know someone that you're mentoring your situation your mentee what's something that they they sometimes maybe overlook or don't pay enough attention to in the education side of things that really should be taught more he said miller i could teach us now because i know it and it should be talked more about [Music] um i mean when brian was saying that about partials i was like yeah i would agree with that um i don't know how about the process of buying this is there's something missing and all this stuff going on that's not talked about a lot in the process of buying that note of either running numbers or um collateral or what to do with the files or anything like that in that process i'm drawing a blank that's okay that's right if you don't have anything it's good right it means the information's out there that's good if i made dave one thing um i had to look up some youtube videos on how to use the financial calculator and you know i'd be trying to punch the numbers in and everything's coming up zeros or errors and wasn't sure how to input the information then of course once you know you watch a few videos and you know the the switch flips you're like okay and then you know then you just run you're practicing numbers just to get used to using it and okay i can change change the the the interest rate or i can change the payment the months and all that stuff and it's really interesting how all that comes together we actually have a spreadsheet version of the calculator right where you just right it says payment i have it online um and once our portal comes out we have a spreadsheet where you just punch numbers in it'll say your p purchase amount right lpv right your interest rate your your your number of payments your xyz and it goes down and you can literally plug it in and you know what it is and the result shows up um because the calculator is confusing right this fancy dancing thing has a bunch of symbols we've never seen before on that right then we're like so you know and we were talking i guess it was three weeks ago in our investment community group about that it's like you know it's the best way you work right the way i do things different from everyone else i'm a spreadsheet guy i like plugging things spreadsheet and getting results some people like having that physical you know instrument or a digital instrument of a calculator um i get lost on it even though i know what i'm doing i get lost on it spreadsheet's so much easier for me but find what works for you right that's the best way to do it if a calculator works great but remember the calculator only works for performance right it doesn't calculate if it goes default that's the downfall right maria have yourself what would be something you wanted you know that new investors should have known or you would say to them they were looking to get into this or buy their first note and what should you know some of the educators out there are missing on their education on buying that first note all right so the calculations definitely something that should be talked about more um during that education process and um something like that should know by buying the first note would be um practice due diligence as as much as possible you know and then and also you want to be aware of the different exit exit strategies prepare you know ahead of time for that because i you can learn from me i went in just with one strategy in mind i don't know i was 100 sure that it would work i don't know why i didn't i didn't even plan for like like a second option so like definitely have a plan b when it comes to all exit strategies yeah you know it's weird you say that because up to about i'm gonna say three years ago my calculator avoided the whole idea of reinstatement all right a little while four years ago and i avoided it until it happened and then i'm like whoa because i never think anyone reinstated i mean i'm mod everything right and reinstatement was something i didn't really count on for a long time i don't know why i did but then it happened and we realized that we we got a reinstatement amount and we the numbers ran we really were stuck because the it was like a three four percent coupon and it dropped like six and a half whatever the number was and we're like crap i can't do anything with this loan right so reinstatement was one of things we learned along the process that we missed in our calculator advanced um we i've shown before my basic beginning calculator i started jump 10 and what i have now um what a change it was strictly based on the experience where i missed where i failed you know calculating you know uh foreclosure timeline for every state this people out there still use a flat rate for foreclosure fees i don't understand why and flat time frame for foreclosures where if you're in texas versus illinois or chicago you're completely different time frames and somebody like what's five grand across the border well you try doing a foreclosure in florida for five grand it ain't happening right um so those are the kind of things that you know people miss out on and i agree with you guys um i think the calculations is huge but you have to feel comfortable with those calculations because as you go down that rabbit hole you're getting more and more like right now we're building our stash limitations in every scenarios that our calculator can tell us flagging it for status limitations issues you know because there's not every state is not same and every state's situation is different from a real estate so one may go off last payment received another maybe golf maturity one may go off of you know a uh judgment right there's one startup when did you start foreclosure every state is different scenarios which gets plugged back into the calculator which is just nuts right so awesome well this experience guys it's really cool i think this has really been helpful for a lot of people that are feeling they're alone they're like by themselves going oh my god um i don't think i can do it um as i said in the beginning you guys are all experts in real estate this is why you did it um but knowing the fact that you guys did it and you made mistakes and you learn from it um it sounds to me is that you know rule number one don't be doing this with somebody else's money when you first get in because if you're doing with someone else's money you can get yourself in big trouble right if you're borrowing money at a certain rate and you didn't know you're doing yourself in trouble because you just learn it um partner up with someone that's a great opportunity for people right um and that's challenging too for both sides right make sure you match um in our beginner series we talk about find that person because it's huge to help out but same time you got to make sure that when you do that that you match understanding the way they teach you the way they guide you and same way the other way right so awesome well again i want to thank you guys for joining us me on this friday afternoon friday morning for some of you guys um and just allowing others to listen to your journey i think it's been really cool so all right guys well thank you very much we'll be on next week as well but i really appreciate you guys coming out if you guys have any questions for you guys they're all in our facebook group and uh you know in our in our circle friends feel free to reach out to them and uh enjoy everyone thank you again for being on thank you dave i appreciate it [Music] [Music] hey everybody dave puts here from jkp holdings we have a special guest today more than one and uh what we're going to be doing is introducing some new investors who've uh been in the space for millions of years right um actually not so alongside me we have a few special guests here really brand new to the space of no investing um something we haven't done in a while but we wanted to kind of share with everybody what it's like to go through your first asset purchase and it's nervous it's scary we don't know where to go where to turn where to look for assets what we're trying to do today is kind of share other stories of their first purchase of their first maybe one or two purchases what their story what was the journey like um and kind of relate to things like that so it's pretty interesting to see that this is gonna be something that we've not done before um and we look forward to hearing from people so again dave putz here from jkp holdings uh we're streaming live the facebook group as well as linkedin um you can take a look at us on jkpholdings.com and we also have a free youtube channel so take a look at that sharing like and all that good stuff from there so today uh i have brian louisa i'm maria as well so welcome guys i appreciate you jumping in on a friday afternoon uh morning for some of you guys um and joining me today to kind of share your journey of note investing so welcome i want to start off with asking you guys what your background wants i know you guys are all gurus and real estate and everything else you've done a million deals and everything else and you've converted over to notes to take over the world so what's up maria what was your background what is your what's your history like what'd you get into how did you get into notes all right well hi everyone my background is in clinical research and so i've been doing that for the past five years but just recently you know i was curious i needed something else so um and you know everyone talks about real estate you know it's a good investment and everything so i you know i started doing my research about a couple years ago and i thought about you know the natural like conventional real estate methods but like you know i it really appeals to me and then i came across the idea of notes and so i attended a workshop that lasted about a month and so then i i knew that it's something i would i could see myself doing so that's just how i started and just from there and then it was it was so well structured and everything was laid out so perfectly for me and so i figured that why not why not continue it and the workshop was based basically on um second non-performing second mortgage notes and so i just i just went on with that and i thought it was great yeah cool awesome lisa what was your experience how did you get introduced to it what were you doing before that can you share a little about that yeah my name larisa and i am a stay-at-home mom i worked in the financial software uh business or industry i guess for like 10 years before i started staying home with my kids um a couple years ago we decided to travel full-time and so we live in our rv and traveled around so when we did that i rented out my house in oklahoma and we so kind of like stuck my toe in the water for real estate um being a landlord but um it's not my favorite activity being a landlord but i thought i wanted to do something like that similar to what marie said and so i joined like the bigger pocket forums and um was following that and that's where i saw the node investing and i took a deep dive researching that for several months just trying to gather everything i could i did join like attend a couple of like weekend workshops and yeah i mean from there i did i did reach out i found a mentor that i've been working with to kind of like take me to the next to the next level but that's where i'm at right now awesome brian what was your background before getting into notes and how did you get into notes thanks dave um thanks for having me too uh i'm a truck driver by trade i have been for 20 plus years and during that time i was consuming a lot of content on podcasts and such in real estate and in 2018 i talked my father into my parents into buying a rental property and i would manage it and during that time as well i was also learning about notes i did a private loan to a friend of mine uh basically a debt consolidation loan if you will through my uh self-directed ira and then also with the intent of getting into to uh real estate notes okay as well just i was listening about 40 hours of podcasts a week on all sorts of uh topics but mainly real estate you know side hustle that sort of thing and so the rental property actually we just sold that uh earlier actually a month ago yesterday and was able to put a nice check in my parents hand for that thanks to the current market and so now i'm uh focused all all on notes now okay awesome so maria where did you begin looking for notes and then one of the first questions would you guys where could i buy a note from where how did you go through that process what was some of the things you started off with and looking for where did you find the first assets okay so during my workshop at the end of my workshop they provided a list of sites to look for notes so so that's that's pretty much how i started i just followed those links and followed those uh looked on those websites including paper sack was one of them and um when the one i actually ended up buying my notes from was a site that didn't have the notes listed i just signed up for you know whenever they have notes available they would email them to me so that's how i ended up finding my notes but i i did look there was a i had a list of cycles i had it i had it made pretty much so it's so weird because finding an asset once you get stumble across them you start saying oh i can find them all over the place but i also find the problem is that we once you start looking you get everyone in the world that has a note and they don't all have notes some are brokers right what did you get there's release where would you go to their process of making sure you're buying from a legit seller um like that's hard right that's figuring did you come across a lot of people saying i have a note for sale and you found out they didn't so i didn't i didn't go for individuals okay i went for like you know i guess agencies or like some like real estate oh what did you call them brokers brokers yeah i didn't go for individuals like i i saw some you know some people listed theirs on facebook in facebook groups and everything and nothing wrong with that but i just figured like from my first experience i would like to you know to get started with at least where there's already a system set up and i'll just follow yes yeah what was your story like what was your first note where did you find it what'd you look for how did you go across that all right so i was oh wait let me see but lewis what was her story what was her background what did she get to where did she find her first stuff um so i mentioned i've been working with a mentor so i definitely have been browsing like all the online resources paper stack was mentioned um things like that um but through networking and with through my mentors actually where i got my first note from so he had like resources and um people that he already had connections with and was able to find one it was a list of assets so we looked through them and found one that met my criteria um and that the person that that i bought it from was also a well-known name that i had heard of through just like online communities and things um so that felt like a safe place definitely a fear to to come across someone who isn't legit and i kind of have like at least a plan in place to do a little research on a person just like through the community forums facebook group see if they're active see if they're out there or anything like that are they legit right are they who they say they are right so when you went through that process what was some of the things you learned through that process well leading up to it i felt like i had a pretty good grasp of like what the process would be like just from research and everything but you never know until you actually do it sure um so that was a really great learning experience just to go through the actual process but um i guess just the order of events like once you make the bid and then whether they counter or accept and then um like reviewing the full collateral and um i don't know like the time frame that those things actually take you know days or weeks or things like that it was interesting to go through the actual process i guess so brian what was your experience like finding that first asset did you go through multiple assets to get to that one or did you find that first one and jump on top of it like dude was it something you liked about it you just went over and grabbed a hold of it i looked at a lot of resources first like you get on email lists and you know the occasional tape that you get sent to you but that seems daunting and overwhelming you know it's just a list of addresses and unpaid balances and it's like where the heck do i start and so when i first started looking through online resources uh fci was still i had a portal for buying notes and then i was looking at notes direct as well yep and but then again with notes direct it was like okay now i can at least see a picture of it but it still seems like where's the rest of the information and what what's my next step from there and then um uh i did see got onto paper stack and that just seemed like for the newer note investor that it could guide you through and this is your next step i love their timeline you know this is what's what goes now and the buyer has to do this seller has to do this and so i would look a lot on paper stack because i knew i had a good grasp on whether the note would make me enough money but then again it's that whole due diligence side of things so had a little bit of paralysis by analysis there and you know then i eventually just found a i had been looking at lower balance notes found one and and reached out and you know is that oh first first bid that i sent in was accepted and you know this the ball started rolling from there cool so maria when you got into that first note what about that note was something that you felt comfortable with diving more into it what was about the note was it that it was an easy detailed note was it the numbers worked well was it in a state you liked what about it was the most attractive right so i bought my first two notes together so i bought like two right off the gate and so they met my criteria as far as like they were non-performing they were second mortgage notes and the numbers did make sense and um also i was my bid was accepted at the amount that i wanted it to be accepted i mean within that range so that worked out that's why i decided to buy them so with that being comfortable so where was it that that note those two notes were you looking for that particular kind of assets and narrowed down like i'm looking for this particular thing and i narrowed everything down to a bunch that labeled this or were you open to what were your what would you narrow down from what was your filters i guess best word for it so i was looking exactly for that because that's what i was trained for and i was not willing to go off script especially not with the first um yeah so i i went exactly for that and luckily i was able to find it took a little bit of time but i you know it worked out yeah yeah so marissa what was what louise what was your what was your experience did you filter down based on the experience you had your mentor or were you given hey listen we'll look at these three you know and narrow down how was your first experience and what were you looking for um my focus right now is on performing first so that was definitely like a filter like i don't want i'm not interested in non-performing at this time um i have a handful of states that i was really focusing in on um so those are my criteria also um i have a limited amount of funds so that you know price range the unpaid balance was definitely a determining factor um it was important to me to have a certain like payments and payment amount and this one's particularly it was a re-performing note and so they had like ach payments already scheduled and so that like made me feel a little more comfortable that they felt a little more committed to be you know payments going in automatically each month so i jumped on it okay cool so that's a big thing for a lot of people is a payment amount right because your servicer killed that amount right people don't know with a hundred hurdle payment hey fellow no investor are you looking to learn the basics of note investing so you can get started however you don't want to spend a few hundreds or thousands of dollars in hours online on some training program have you thought about attending a notes conference however you don't want to spend the money or the time away from your family well we have a tremendous beginners video series of 20 different topics with each video being less than 15 minutes this means each video is less fluff and direct to the content visit www.jkpholdings.com beginner dash series to learn more again www.jkpholdings.com beginner dash series you're paying 15 20 30 a month or a 95 for now performer right and simulation if you have a hundred hour month payment here's your investment right there goes your profits that's struggling right um and we talk a lot i i know a lot of people talk in space buy based on percentages uh upv and bpo and if you run numbers based on that that all those factors don't come in but if you really run numbers based on your returns and figuring that out you realize quickly all these expenses now drop your return down and you make sure you bid based on that number now um i'm sure you guys seen our calculator and our process thing like that um but you gotta look at that kind of stuff so i hope that helps right so brian what was your first experience what was where did you you know what made these assets stand out amongst all the other ones you looked at the one that i ended up purchasing was my criteria was very wide i was looking at first seconds performing non-performing contract for deeds mortgages the uh the non-performing and marie kudos to you for going after second non-performings um to me that just seemed like if i make the investment and it doesn't work out then i'm really just out flat yeah so i focused on i ended up going with a contract for deed you know it said it was uh performing the payment exactly like you said 100 bucks a month and um to kind of fast forward a little bit after we closed on the whole thing then i got the call from the guy that um sold it to me he's like yeah i just want to touch base and tell you a little bit about the note and so i that concerned me a little bit it ended up has ended up turning out positive for the whole thing uh but those were the things that i was worried i was more focused on the the payment and thought okay 100 bucks i'll make my money back in five to six years which was decent for me uh but then again you take out that 30 bucks a month for servicing and yeah you know you're pretty much so fast forward a little bit i'm handling the payments now myself because i've contacted the borrower and that's that's been a bit of a rollercoaster too so you did it through the online portals which is really easy to use right it was different from using a spreadsheet and a lot of people who are expression friendly find it so much easier right so when you look at things like that what made what was the one thing emery i know you didn't do you know everything brian you know that but what made the way you bought it easy was there anything easy about it right what was was there something simple or was every step in education um you mean like education about like the the process yeah the process of you know was there anything that was easy like oh well you know um you know wiring the money was easy or you know blindly right that's the first time you do things um running numbers was easy what was was there anything easy or hard that stood out like that was the hardest part of the process for you um the hardest part of the process was that fear because i didn't have help with the collateral file at first so i was afraid that to miss something you know like what if i missed something and then that you know i threw the entire process off or you know but it it turned it ended up working out and wiring the money was definitely easy as soon as i i contacted the bank and they just walked me through that process um the number part was fine i didn't have too much of a hard time with that because i had that set up too and um yeah it was definitely an experience but i didn't get stuck too much i had the resources to make it pretty smooth okay yeah what was your experience right was there something that stood out that was easy um i mean honestly i was pretty hand held my mentor's amazing and so any questions i had he was like right there so it went really smoothly and even he was like well that was the smoothest i've probably ever experienced so probably have it coming for me but um it was just every step was just outside my comfort zone you know like even making the bid or you know like each step was just a little bit of discomfort to work through but then now i feel confident on the other side to say yeah i can do this like even you know called a real estate agent to give me like a cma and all that was just brand new to me so being on the phone right getting their phone they're going this property's not listed for sale what do you mean yes buying it yeah they're like what are you talking about so yeah that was nervous that's crazy i'm not listening i'm hanging out right yeah i i got definitely like i went i think i went through four people because i they wouldn't actually respond they're like i'll get back to you it's like right so it's funny because you say that and you know working did you buy bpo no i didn't do a bpo it was performing so i just kind of wanted like uh like the cma will confirm or other properties kudos right because the cma is really the most important thing in the pictures make sure the house is standing and give me some data points right because a lot of agents don't know what anything else to do they don't understand the investment side of things um we're getting a few questions on facebook right now and you know one of the questions would ask about um what would your what was your expectation for return what was your expectation in your return annual return lisa what was that that number you were shooting for or were you just kind of hoping and praying honestly i'm kind of my range was like 12 to 16 percent is really what i shoot for okay and that's just based on you know reading articles and you know different sources giving slightly different ranges so that's just kind of where i landed okay cool brian what was your was there a spotness that was easy or hard for you that was a good education and were you shooting for a certain return on paper i saw that there was going to be a profit there my purchase price was 5400 and the unpaid balance was 77.

so i knew if it paid out i'd at least make that and it was like a nine percent note so you know i knew there was some profit there again minus the 30 bucks a month from servicing but i figured if i could have just gone through the process that first one was going to be you know just my initial jump in start to go through the steps even if it didn't make money you know i knew that down the road there'd be more that would make money so now i'm getting used to looking at a note and working with the financial calculator saying okay this purchase price is going to give me a 14 you know return yeah and so i can it's just as i build that education you know i had a broad base and now i'm you know starting to build up that that knowledge and and how to work with it and how to how to really look at it so when you looked at these assets and you figure out the numbers you're hoping for kind of figuring things out what was the biggest surprise brian that you found out that like you didn't realize didn't expect some of them were the the difference between their asking price and the unpaid balance okay and i almost went into it sometimes like why are they giving this much of a discount or this one's been on the on line for 30 days yeah there must be something wrong with it my first bid got accepted there must be you know there's a reason why nobody else is going after this one yeah so you know those thoughts you can't help but have those thoughts to go through your head it's like okay this one's been on for a month why hasn't anybody jumped on it and you kind of find out afterwards you know maybe some of the reason but uh i think i was kind of thinking about this before we got on like the steps that i took i if i was telling somebody how to go through the steps of buying a note i would tell them not to do what i did because i think i went from bid to like final accepted offer you know within a day or so and look through the digital correct collateral file i never ordered a um a title search or anything and you know so the guy that i bought it from afterwards like well i probably would have uh if i were you like okay check that box for next time and you know that i still am in contact with the guy that i bought it from first i think you know him on jamie is the guy that i bought it from and has been he's been great ever since i'll reach out to him on messenger ask him some questions and you know so it's that has been kind of funny that luckily i think it's total luck that that it has worked out the way it has for me sure um because now she now the unpaid balance is actually down to less than what i paid for it um so for for several reasons so bernie let's rewind before you bought that note your future self talking your past self what would one thing you wish you knew before making that journey through your first purchase purchases uh i wish i knew how difficult i'm going to confess now i wish i knew how difficult it was to to get the note to perform again okay because it's it's been a challenge they just it sounds easy right just get the photo on the phone get the search and perform well yeah you know like from the course that i wanted the workshop that i attended it sounded easy but like i didn't know exactly how what to expect like how it actually turned out you know in real life so now i know i'm experiencing it it's it's i know it's definitely manageable but you know it's it's taking a while to get there but you know just be patient sure yeah you know it's funny because you know some people have different experiences and for most people you know we all talk about it being possible to do a lot of things um getting a modification happened i know a bunch of people have bought notes and because the other borrower other lender didn't reach out didn't do whatever or the servicer was not that good switching it over that person called up like i've been trying to make payment forever sounds good it doesn't always happen that way right down before me so it sounds to me as you should have planned the fact of the worst case scenario being a foreclosure or not performing then hoping it performed does that make sense right because actually i i honestly maybe i should have thought about focusing ahead of time because um my goal actually was to get the note re-performing to then flip it was my exit strategy and then use that capital to purchase more loans more notes that i would keep so it sounds to me and i'm going to clarify what i'm understanding is that when we go into the mindset of this is what's going to happen right that's where you get yourself in trouble right then i'm going to go into this deal projecting out what the borrower's going to do yes exactly and this is what i'm going to be able to do right instead of saying okay what are the extra strategies that could happen it's this is the x-ray i'm targeting because this looks like a killer deal if it performs or when it performs right and we find it later it may not be as good as we hoped right in planning for the worst case scenario and hoping for the best is actually about a strategy it sounds like yeah that's definitely i definitely i'm different taking notes for the next time so luisa how about yourself what was your go back to before you bought the note and today what could you educate yourself on what is what did even educators and you know and the person who you know guide you to the process isn't in your shoes what did you learn through that process um honestly it's kind of a hard question for me i guess but um i guess really i just wish i would have started earlier i wish i would have taken that first step earlier because i learned so much in the process that i you know we all say that analysis paralysis and so i feel like i was kind of stuck in that phase for too long so i wish i just would have started before and then been that much further ahead heads it was really weird without really asking numbers let's say you spend five grand on the deal if that goes completely bonkers and whatever are you happy with the education you've got the process yes absolutely it makes you a better investor later right yeah brian how about yourself before you bought those assets today what would you wish you if you're teaching yourself what would you say to yourself forget whatever else says out there this is what you need to know for those first purchases i can i consumed a lot of content on the steps to do sure you know and and due diligence i felt would have been my my weak point because i could calculate the numbers and i was comfortable with that and then it's well i know what to do but i still didn't go through all the steps and kind of uh you know i think of the three of us i didn't have a mentor or didn't do a class it's just been you know 18 wheel university and and learn teaching myself that way so then i think oh i can just go through the steps myself and then you know to my not detriment but the one thing i wish i would have done differently is follow through with all those steps gotcha so you had the steps in line you just didn't follow you jumped them right because i i've listened to yeah all the problems many people a week yeah 20 people a week saying you know you especially i i've consumed a lot of your content dave and i love it and it's the yup you gotta do this this this and then i'd you know one two three four five and i go one three five shortcuts put in the bid right shortcuts and there are shortcuts you can take as you get more experience you know what to do right you need to talk right like somebody like dave i wouldn't do that it's not worth my time they've been buying notes as long as i have um but there are certain times it makes you feel comfortable and when we invest we want to make sure we feel comfortable we also have to be we have to understand the fact that it's an investment there's risk level and we have to take chances here so we'll get some questions here also brian go back are you using a servicer and brian you said before you're not um are you self-servicing i am on on this one both on my the personal loan that i have out the check goes to me to my self-directed but i have the records of that uh the the cfd that i have it was with one of the major servicers and at 30 bucks a month that was killing me and when i reached out to the borrower and we basically turned i didn't change any of the terms of the note just kind of verbally went from a what was going to be a five plus year note down to probably going to be paid off in 18 months that you know she's like can i just send you the checks directly supposedly she was having issues with them not you know posting her payments and that sort of thing and late payments and you know a month or two without a payment and then she'd get caught up so you know she literally cash apps me you know the payments and i have a spreadsheet that i you know uh put a line item in for the payment the first of every month i add in the interest and again i wouldn't recommend anyone do it this way but that's how it's worked out i've gotten a i have a good relationship with the borrower now and you know so it's cool it should work its way out there is what was are you using a servicer are you self-servicing and how'd you find yourself i am using a servicer i do have just a list of servicers that i've heard you know done my own research on but i decided to keep the note at the existing servicer it was a well-known one already maybe more expensive than some others that i heard but because my note was already on like an ach payment i just decided to keep them flowing and not try to disrupt that at all it makes sense right my first note i bought i kept the same servicer um because easy and you know and my first worry ....