Notebuying is a very good business. Done well, notebuying can generate both significant lump sums of cash as well as passive income. You don't have to rehab properties, you don't have to deal with tenants (usually) and you can do all your share of the "work" without leaving your La Z Boy recliner (that's a big deal for me). Sounds great!
Many of my colleagues in our local REIA's who are/were veteran real estate investors supplement their rentals and flips with notebuying and some gave up rentals and flips altogether and switched to notebuying. These are smart, talented and skilled investors, so there must be something about notebuying that is better than real estate investing.
If you don't know much about notebuying and do know about real estate investing, you are probably interested to learn about the attractive results notebuying delivers and I'm not surprised that you will continue reading this article to learn a little about notebuying and see some typical notebuying scenarios.
If you are nearing “retirement age” and already know about notebuying, you may want to skip to the end of the article to the section “Why Don’t I Invest in Notes?”
First, a disclaimer. While I am a successful part-time real estate investor, I am not a notebuyer. The reason I am comfortable discussing this topic is that I analyzed and studied in significant detail the portfolios and performance of two notebuyers in my sphere of influence. The performance was impressive in both cases with ROI's north of 40% when looking at an entire portfolio, including notes in the portfolio that don't pay out a penny. Yes, that's impressive to just about everyone.
In short, the reason to learn notebuying is that when done well, the return on investment is high and you can generate passive income, lump sum payments or both!
Therefore, I encourage you to learn more about notebuying from highly skilled and highly reputable notebuying experts. I strongly recommend that you read material and/or listen to lectures/training by Donna Bauer, "The Original Notebuyer," and Dave Van Horn of PPR. I know Donna and Dave well and not only do they have successful very extensive real-world experience with notebuying, they have high personal integrity. There is so much hype in the investment world, that it is very important to listen to experts who can be trusted. Donna Bauer and Dave Van Horn are such experts.
In other words, everything written below is not qualified information about notebuying, it is just my novice understanding. It's just food for thought so you can learn the reality from the experts and maybe this article will serve as a basis for clarifying questions you can ask of the experts.
In this article, I will not attempt to explain the details of notebuying comprehensively. I recommend you get Donna’s and Dave’s materials for the correct details and comprehensive training. I will non-comprehensively describe a very limited number of notebuying scenarios as I understand them.
In the broadest of terms, notebuying is based on buying promissory notes at a discount relative to the unpaid principal balance (UPB) of each note. The value for the investor is created from that discount.
Promissory notes are IOU’s that people sign to borrow money to buy homes, cars, student loans and more. When the people who borrowed the money stop paying the payments on the loans, the lenders have a problem and are sometimes willing to sell the loans to notebuyers for less money than is owed on the loan.
According to my very novice understanding, two of the broad categories of notebuying are “performing notes” and “non-performing notes” (NPN’s). I'll start by explaining my understanding of just one of many non-performing notes scenarios, which is non-performing second notes. The concepts are also valid for non-performing first mortgage notes.
Let's say that a homeowner bought a house at the top of the seller's market using a large first mortgage loan and a small second mortgage loan. Let's assume that the remaining unpaid balance (“UPB”) on the first mortgage loan is $160,000, the remaining UPB on the second mortgage loan is $40,000 and the home is currently worth about $180,000 after the ups and downs of the market cycles. Let's further assume that the homeowner loves the house, loves the neighborhood, is paying his first mortgage loan on time but due to some hardship (e.g., job loss, medical situation, divorce, etc.), they just don't have the money to pay on the second mortgage loan.