Ep. #47 - The Note Closers Show Podcast Host - Scott Carson

Ok, so while I know you love listening to just me in the solo-cast format - I don't know everything (Yes, I'm shocked by that as well). So I'll occasionally have a guest on the show to share their expertise or experience. Actually, I'm going to try to do that a lot more often - with the thought that if they have something to say that interests me, it might also be of interest to you. In line with that, I'm interested in Real Estate Note Investing, and so my guest on today's episode is Scott "The Note Guy" Carson.

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Intro...

Welcome to Episode #47 - with The Note Closers Show Podcast Host - Scott Carson

So I won't delay this... Just a little background. I first meet Scott Carson at Podfest Expo 2019 in Orlando, Florida. I went to this event about a month prior to releasing the first episode of this Podcast. Scott was one of the many great speakers at the event, and I took more than one nugget from his presentation that became the... and Landlord Podcast!

So, if you're considering starting a Podcast, Podfest Expo will take place again early next month - and it's certainly a worthwhile event. If I can get my schedule right, I'll be attending again, as it'll give me a chance to get more great guests on the show, like Scott Carson. So without further delay, here's my first guest interview since way back at episode #20. Keep listening and you'll learn why I'll certainly give Note Investing a try.

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* Automated Transcript *

J.T. Smith (00:05):
All right, so welcome to the and landlord podcast and I'm excited to have a guest today on the show. I'll be doing an interview with Scott Carson, who is the host of a popular podcast. The note closers show podcast. Scott is a nationally syndicated radio host. He's been an active real estate investor and entrepreneur since 2002. He focuses on the thing that we're going to discuss today, the niche of distressed mortgage and note investing. He's done that since 2008. He is a highly sought after speaker and podcast guests, which is why I'm so excited to have him on the show. He's been on hundreds of different speaking engagements and appearances at conferences, real estate clubs, networking events across the country, and he's also been featured in many media outlets, not limited to Investor's Business Daily, The Wall Street Journal, Ink.com. He calls his home Austin, Texas. So join me in welcoming to the show, Scott "The Note Guy" Carson.

Scott Carson (01:09):
Hey J.T, I'm so honored to be on here, man. Excited to have some fun with it today and deliver some nuggets to your your amazing audience. Honored to be here.

J.T. Smith:
So before we get into it, what do you do for your free time when you're not related to real estate or something like that?

Scott Carson:
So that's a great, great question. I'm a big sports fan. I played college football for a couple of years in college. And so, I love attending football, baseball, sporting events. I like going to concerts. But we also do a lot of stuff here locally in Austin. Austin's a beautiful city, the live music capital of the world. So we love going out to different venues here, great food and also enjoy the artsy side of things, theater plays, we just like to have a lot of fun. And so I think he has some of the biggest things is when my father left know, passed away years ago, one of the biggest things he always said to me is life is about making memories. And so if you can't, if you can't enjoy it, you're doing something wrong. And so we try to do something fun every week if we can or try to experience the life because life is a buffet and it's a, it's an amazing ride if you can enjoy it and, and die from that table.

J.T. Smith (02:19):
I've had some good outings in the Austin area when I was there for conferences. So yeah, you're right. That is a place that has some pretty good nightlife activities and the colleges are there. So if you're a fan of any of those local teams, you can definitely find a game. So, yeah, no doubt there. So the reason that I wanted to talk to you, I'm fascinated with the idea of different ways of investing in real estate. As , I'm a landlord. I concentrate on buying properties directly and renting them out. But the idea of going about it a different way of getting the note was always something that was fascinating to me. But I had a little fear and I feared losing money and

Scott Carson (03:00):
Investing in distressed assets. So I was wondering if you could just give me a high level overview of the note investing business such that it's not going to scare me away and think that I'm going to lose all my mind. No, it's a, it's a really good question Jonathan. That's one of the most common questions we get from people is why the heck would I want to invest in a distress note? And the biggest thing that you have to realize is while the note and the mortgage is distressed, and what do you mean by distress? It means that somebody has either fallen on hard times or something's just not making their mortgage payments. And that can happen for a variety of reasons. They've been laid off, the market is crashed, which we obviously saw over a decade ago. They've gotten sick loss of a loved one going through a divorce.

Scott Carson (03:42):
, there's a variety of things that people won't make mortar fan, but we find that most people want to pay the mortgage on time. They want that dream of home ownership. So the distress side of things is just on the mortgage. But the beautiful thing that backs the mortgage as collateral is the real estate. And so I'll give you an example. Borrows $120,000 on a house is only worth a hundred K or maybe making payments or haven't made payments in six months or so. We oftentimes can pick up that mortgage somewhere around 30 to 60 cents on the value of the property, which gives us a lot of flexibility to pick up deals at well below what other people are paying in the traditional retail markets. , so that's the thing that I like is that Hey, we buy the debt at a substantial discount from the bank through the hedge funds out there.

Scott Carson (04:34):
We become the bank where I'm only buying first liens. And so that way we can negotiate it. Since we bought the note Dame discount, we can reach back out to mr and mrs borrower and say, listen, Hey, I know you've gone through some hard times. , let's get you back on track. , I don't actually want to keep them in the house. I don't want to take the property back. I mean, we'd still do that if they won't work with us, but I actually make more money when somebody starts paying a mortgage back on time or , reinstated or Longmont, , doing loan mods that the returns, I don't have to go out and deal with toilets, tenants and trash outs and still own the house. They still own the house. Exactly. We just become the bank. If we get them to say we paid 40 cents of value, we paid 40 grand for that.

Scott Carson (05:20):
$120,000 not, we basically paid 33 cents on the dollar. Well, mr borrower, he starts paying on time again. Yeah. We've got the flexibility with like, listen, I know you're six months behind. Let's take that six months and I did it with face amount of the loan or Hey, let's drop your balance to a hundred after you pay on time for 12 months. Listen, I'm not worried about the back payments because I bought it at a discount, so I've got the flexibility to forgive that if I need to, but they pay on time for 12 months. It's not considered a re-performing note that I could sell at 80 85 90% of value and that's a pretty good profit margin in 12 months plus the cashflow along the way. Or I just hold onto the notes. So going back to same numbers, $120,000 mortgage, they might have a principal and interest payment of say $600 a month.

Scott Carson (06:08):
Well 600 times 12 is study 200 if I paid 40 grand for that note, sitting 200 on top of 40,000 is a, it's a decent return. But when you add in that extra income or a lot of times we like to have the borrowers pay a little bit extra, a little bit of skin in the game. I mean I've been paid for six months or 12 months. What have they been doing with their money, especially if they've been working. That boosts the returns up and we really got some great returns that we see. Well, they'll have to do all the heavy lifting, , then we're not paying for taxes, they're not paying for upkeep and we've got some legal fees. And some servicing costs. But I'm only buying first liens. I like to buy owner occupied properties cause then it's usually not too damaged.

Scott Carson (06:49):
If it's a vacant property, it needs a lot more work. And this way we're able to kind of the beautiful thing is we're not doing all ourselves. There's so many vendors out there that help us do this in so many markets, but it's what I believe is really the last place to find a lot of good deals below. What we're seeing in traditional REO markets or retail markets where I think a lot of new investors are overpaying for assets. So it gives us access to deals, bigger discounts, and often better returns, a lot, lot less work. So when I'm looking for deals, I'm trying to find a distressed home that I may be able to get for 30, 40% below it's otherwise completed and rehabbed value with some room in there for the rehab budget. Where are you able or how are you able to find assets where you can buy the note at such a deep discount off of what is otherwise owed on that property?

Scott Carson (07:47):
We go direct to banks in different real estate hedge funds that have, , either financed assets inside the banks. Every bank sells debt. They just, they just won't tell you a lot of times, okay, now you're not going to go down to your local bank of America chase or Citibank and knock on their door, say, Hey, I want to buy your notes. They'll say, see you later. , I used to be a banker for JP Morgan chase. I didn't even know about this aspect of God until I got into the real estate side of investing. So the, the internal departments of your regional banks are often the better places to go. Banks that have at least five branches or more at least. I mean, there's a lot of them. I mean, that's, there's over 1600 different banks across the country to have at least five branches or more.

Scott Carson (08:28):
And then that doesn't include in all the mortgage companies that are originating loans right now that having to take some stuff back or other things. So the internal departments go by specific names, special asset managers, secondary marketing managers or a whole loan sales departments. These are the guys and the girls or the ladies and gentlemen, as we should say inside the department that actually have a couple of brain cells. They're looking at the bank's portfolio and saying, okay, what do we have that's performing? And then what are our problem? Children, what are the non-performing, cause they nonperforming notes is a, is not a good thing for a bank. It costs them about 10 times. What the balance balances, what they went out taught and fees that they can't generate or Oh, a arbitrage out dramatically. So it hurt affects your bottom line.

Scott Carson (09:14):
So that's why if you start being seven days late on a mortgage payment the, the phone starts ringing off the hook. You start having certify letters show up because when it gets to 31 days, it'd be on one month in default. The value of that mortgage starts dropping five to 10% each month you're in the fall. So it's a matter of we do a lot of drip marketing and in my drip marketing, I mean email blast out to asset managers , on a regular basis we leverage LinkedIn to find people at different, ,

J.T. Smith (09:43):
Identified themselves as an asset manager or something related to the industry on their LinkedIn profile.

Scott Carson (09:49):
Yeah, exactly. You do a search for like special asset manager. You may find like some are between 70,000 to 100,000 people that have that title currently and then it's a matter of reaching out to them. We use a couple of things like lead fuse or octopus CRM that are tools for LinkedIn that we can help automate the process. Like in the last hour I've had messages, direct messages going out in LinkedIn to the asset managers saying, Hey, what do you have on your books? And one of the, the gentleman sent me back said, Hey, I've got a list of some performing notes that I'm willing to solve the discount to, which I'm like, I'm all excited about the discount performing up that I can pick up at a yield at 12 to 15% without having to do a lot of work.

J.T. Smith (10:27):
So when you're out working with the asset managers, is it just general properties or can you target specific properties with them?

Scott Carson (10:36):
So that's the thing. The more specific you try to dig down, the harder it's going to be. Cause these guys and gals are dealing with, , big portfolios. So I would say, Hey, tell me what you've got and I'll take a look at cherry pictures. If you go in and try to say, Hey, I want in a specific zip code, or I just want in a Durham, , North Carolina, North Carolina is a really popular market. So the more, what I would say is get on the radar, get a listen to you, build that relationship and then start, , they'll, I got, I got a list. So yesterday's study, seven assets all across the country, single family, first lane homes, and then I can air it down by doing my due diligence. Okay. Square footage, , values, , if they're in a city or on the outskirts, , if it's mobile homes, I usually eliminate those because they usually need a lot of work. what I mean? And I like, I like bread and butter assets. Three bedroom, two bath. Yeah. At least a thousand square foot. In a, in a city that's going to have at least 50,000 people or more because it means I've got plenty of people there, vendors, realtors, that if I do have to foreclose, I've got the team to do it in those areas and people that could actually buy the property from you in a timely fashion.

J.T. Smith (11:45):
So you have to be comfortable working out of your local market, but you've already identified certain markets that when something comes up in that market, you're ready to jump it. Yeah. I mean,

Scott Carson (11:54):
Austin, Texas is a, is a great market. We've got, we didn't hit see a big downturn in the economy over a decade ago. I mean property is going through the roof here. I haven't bought anything in Austin, in my own market here in Texas alone. I tell you, I think about it. I bought a couple, I bought like four notes in, in Dallas and Houston and a couple other places in the last day or for the most part, 99% of the deals that I bought had been outside of my home state. And that's a thing with, , a beautiful thing called the internet these days. , you've heard about that, right? I've heard of this thing. Exactly. You've got Facebook groups, you've got meetup groups, there are vendors that are put in place in the mortgage industry, the servicing industry to help you with that borrower outreach.

Scott Carson (12:38):
And then, , dealing with the property if something, if they don't pay or helping you with a foreclosure and things like that. And that's the, that's the beautiful thing. I've got a a servicing company out of Reno, Nevada that handles the collections and the, , mailing out to the borrowers. If a bar doesn't respond, then we've got attorneys that will expedite that aspect of re but you're not sending legal documents. And then if we take the property back or foreclosed and of course we just reach out to local realtors and a couple of teams there that handle us with the either the the fixing, , the up or helping us list a property and get it sold. So are you also leveraging realtors to put eyes on the properties before you commit? Oh yeah. That's a big thing is well am I get a listing of 77 70.

Scott Carson (13:23):
I make 20 offers in the first 24 hours. I don't have to go put eyes immediately on the property. I jump online and do a little bit of due diligence online street view and exactly. , pulling rent numbers, looking at the payment history. I'm doing a little bit of social sleuthing on the borrower to see what's going on. I mean that's the thing is we get a little bit more type of due diligence versus just the property in numbers. Cause you, I want to know what the likelihood is that you can bring them back to a paying status. Exactly. Exactly. Cause we get the low file. So we get copies of the loan file. We can see the call logs. We can see the discussion back and forth with a servicing company. We can see the, , the whole loan application.

Scott Carson (14:05):
If a borrower has tried to do a loan mot or sitting in a hardship letter to the bank or the lender, we often will get those. So we can take a look at that and see what kind of their emotional statuses. Yeah, we look at where, what are they? Are they working? Can we tell that online? I have one borrower who posted on Facebook when we were looking like, Hmm, am I going to make my mortgage payment or go to Disney this month? I guess I'm going to go to Disney. , that's probably a good sign. They're not going to re perform. what I mean? But so, but we always do put eyes on a property that would either be realtors by pulling local cops. I mean you're not going to get into the properties most of the time unless the bar is trying to do a short sale or trying to sell the house out.

Scott Carson (14:40):
But , we do drive-bys. We take a look at condition the property, he wants a long look like, , what's the car look like, what are the notes in the file? And then then we'd go from there. And the more dude, I mean, here's the thing, if you buy occupied assets, which is what we just focus on, there's a more likelihood and you actually have more exit strategies to get that loan performing. If it's a vacant property, it's, it's, you're not going to get re performance and become either a foreclosure, a cash for keys, and then go that, , that that road of taking the asset back if possible, you're not going to get it re performing most of the time. And am I over 12 years of doing this? I've only had two people move back into their houses and start re-performing that when we looked at the list exactly when we were looking at first. Yeah.

J.T. Smith (15:29):
So I've experienced several scenarios where banks seem to be reluctant to do a short sale with the owner occupant. Why would they go the route of selling the note at a discount versus working with the borrower already in the home?

Scott Carson (15:43):
So there's a lot of the reasons why it depends on where they're at in a foreclosure. , timeline. If they're basically up to a point where they're foreclosing next month or less, they're very unlikely to do a short sale and they're very unlikely to sell the note to me cause I did most of the heavy lifting. Now if they're in a state that has a longer foreclosure timeline, you have to realize the short-sale apartment is inside of loss mitigation. Okay. The note sales is in special assets or secondary marketing, two completely different departments in the bank. A lot of times they don't even communicate exactly. They don't. And we have on the short sale side, you've got somebody who's making 10 to 17 bucks an hour who's a stack of files on their desk. They're not motivated to really work with a bar.

Scott Carson (16:28):
Not everything is accurate in a short sale stack. They just put at the bottom and go from there. Whereas the secondary marketing side over here or whatever side, the sooner they can get that note off their books, if even they sell it at 50 cents on the dollar, they can take that 50% in and leverage it out 10 to 15 times in a year to make back those fees. So it's total different department. It depends on the foreclosure timeframes. But hearing in Texas, the reason I'm, I bought a lot of notes in Texas is because we foreclosed so fast here you have 21 days, , it's a non judicial state. North Carolina is a relatively faster foreclosure state for the most part and really popular. So that also leads into things being more affordable. I'm just, sorry, sorry. Less affordable because the banks know that they can sell it and be, , if they've done most heavy lifting, they can take it back as an REO and be likely to sell it off for the most part, even though banks don't really like Oreos, , so it depends on where the lenders at the top of the foreclosure timeframe and what that market is doing.

J.T. Smith (17:26):
So in my scenario, when I'm buying properties, I'm typically funding them with a short term funds from either a hard money lender or a private lender. In your scenario, am I right in assuming that you're working with private lenders to fund the note purchases?

Scott Carson (17:41):
Yeah. You're not going to get a hard money lender most of the time to fund the deal, which I don't understand it cause they're in the note game of origination, but they want to own the property. Now I will see some RA sorry. Hard money lenders lend on properties where the borrower signed a deed in lieu and, and it back. Cause that's basically an REO at that point. So, yeah, we deal either with private lenders who use either their funds or their self directed IRAs, , suffer good. Iras are great way to fund these deals. We get a lot of IRA investors are using their own funds or other people's money. , people will take out lines of credit. And when we start giving up to some of the larger balance loans, like on the commercial side, sometimes even the banks will finance the purchase on a note kind of on a million plus balance loan to keep it on their books, take it off from the non-performing side of the performing side. But most of the time you're going to need cash and OPM to take these things down.

J.T. Smith (18:36):
And so are they, when they're lending, are they securitized by the first position note that you're acquiring or is it some other scenario that

Scott Carson (18:44):
Their security, I mean that's the thing is what secures the ownership of a note is what's called an assignment of mortgage, an AOM. So like if chase chase originates a loan and then they go to sell the loan to say me, there would be an assignment of mortgage filed at the County that transfers the ownership of the note or the ownership of the bank basically from chase Manhattan bank to inverse acid fonder Scott Carson. And we'll see. So that's five of the public records. I'm not the lender. The mortgage stays the same saying the Dean stays the same, it's just that you have that collateral file to be able to foreclose. Now you have the assignment to be able to foreclose. So when we're securitizing individual busters, we're doing a couple of ways. One we're either a creating a special purpose LLC that they're part owners of with us or B. Depending what they want to do, we can code name them on the assignment of the mortgage. So they showed us say 50% interest to their LLC or IRA and 50% interest to our entity.

J.T. Smith (19:41):
Okay, that makes sense. So I'm, I'm curious about what my experience would be if I tried to do note investing or distressed mortgage asset investing. But at the same time as is the name of the and landlord podcast. I love being a landlord. I hear a lot of people say things like, you don't have to deal with tenants and toilets and termites and things of that nature. But in my experience it's because those landlords are doing it wrong. And so I don't get those calls at 2:00 AM about the toilet being clogged or anything like that. My life is blissful and I don't have tenant troubles, but at the same time, I want to pursue as many different investment avenues as possible. So for a person who's weighing the difference between being a landlord or being a note investor, other than fear over tenant troubles, is there something that makes one just miles above the other as far as its return on investment or just life value? The time on your, your own time that you have to invest in? Yeah.

Scott Carson (20:44):
Yeah. So here it all comes down to how big of a control freak anybody. And I think a lot of real estate offers, we're all control freaks. We want to touch it or dive into it. , if, if people are, have a full time job and they don't have a lot of time to do the work, I mean you have basically two classes, you're performing notes and then nonperforming notes. If you're looking more passive where you don't have to do a lot of work, I'm a big believer of performing notes or work well for you, you can still get a great, eight to 15% return on investment by buying in a performing note. , there's people like me that buy nonperforming, get it re performing and we sell it off to people that want to get the deal.

Scott Carson (21:22):
And then you're basically dealing just with cashflow each month. You're not dealing with vacancy. You're, you're not dealing, , property management taking a cut out of it. So if you're a really active landlord where you're having to do a lot of stuff, nobody ever called bank of America to unclog a toilet at two o'clock in the morning, what I mean? So that's the way to look at it that way. We have a lot of people that like to get into the non-performing side because they want to increase their re rental holdings. They use it as a way to find deals that they can buy a big discount cause that's the thing that we're seeing is still the substantial discount below what most people are buying on a retail side. That's my thought process as well. Another source of distress properties.

Scott Carson (22:07):
Yeah. And here's the thing too. [inaudible] Most of the time most real estate investors are sending out postcards or flyers or bandit signs or doing the right thing to get one deal from one borrower. We like, I like to know the business cause I'm not dealing with the drama of a homeowner until after I buy, I'm dealing with a bank and I'm often one bank will feed me deals on a monthly, quarterly, annual basis that may not just be one deal. It will be a hundred notes this quarter or 50 notes this quarter. So it's a continued lead source that I don't have to do a lot of work. I'm not doing any direct mail campaigns. I'm not really driving for dollars. I'm just doing an email blast out to our list of banks and they're sending what they have on their books. They're looking to move this quarter or this month.

Scott Carson (22:50):
And if it makes sense, great to the doesn't then we just move on and wait for the next list. So when you're recruiting them among other ways through LinkedIn, yeah, LinkedIn and then once we connect with them there, I mean there are some websites out there that you can jump on like a, there's a service called lane guide. Like in your lane it's like $165 a year. That kind of tracks what banks have, what about what banks? And that's a great way to track down the right person. There are conferences like secondary marketing conferences that we'll go to or kind of stock to see who's showing up to that is as sources I guess you say if you don't want to travel. Even some States some States will actually publish the list of mortgage bankers are licensed to do business in that state. And that's a great way to reach out to those, , those licensed mortgage bankers. Cause if they're a banker, they usually have a warehouse line or they're lending off their own portfolio and they will often have loans that they've to take back that they couldn't sell off to Fannie Mae or Freddie because of something, some issue or something like that. Most can often be really great. This counts as well too.

J.T. Smith (23:54):
So when I first got into real estate investing that the method that I tried was tax lien investing and here in North Carolina they have something called a 10 day update period. People that don't even go to the auction can update you at any time and it just didn't work out for me. Have you done tax deed or tax lien investing as well or?

Scott Carson (24:13):
Yeah, I don't do it North Carolina just for that reason. , not Texas, Texas, one of the best States to invest in tax liens. I do a little bit of that. But most of the time when we're doing a tax sale, it's usually, we're usually I hate to say it is we're using a tax lien in our favor to help expedite the foreclosure, to wipe out liens or to clean up the title. So that's a strategy, the acquisition process. Yeah, exactly. Although today I just got to check in for 20 grand from a, from Duvall County, Jacksonville, Florida on a note that we paid four grand for a year and a half ago. It needs some work, but we, it was just, it wasn't worth putting the work into it based on the value of the property. Well, it went to tax foreclosure and it got bid up 18 grand over what was owed in taxes. So that 18 grand overage goes back to the first lien holder, which I've got 18 grand on basically something I paid five grand for. So we like, we'll check the tax overages and there's all of that happened in the, in there. Tax liens are great in different areas, but I would tell people like, , I like to stay in my lane, we find enough deals in our lane and then go from there. So,

J.T. Smith (25:23):
And you're doing this business with the aid of the team you've built and virtual assistants or,

Scott Carson (25:29):
Yeah, I mean that's a thing is there's, there's teams all across. I've got , we've been doing this a little longer than in a lot of people. So I have a, I have a full time person that works remotely from her house in New Jersey. She used to work for my servicing company, so she handles a lot of the workout strategies, calling the borrowers, tracking things, working with our attorneys or attorneys or remote. Like I said, my servicing companies in Reno, Nevada. I have another one in, in Southern California that we work with. , they're sending spreadsheets to me where we're jumping on the phone. My attorneys are across the country and the States that they're licensed to do business in. So we're working with them remotely. So, yeah, I have a team that's 99% of the way. Not locally. I mean, when I was traveling last summer over in Europe, I answered a few emails on a couple of months.

Scott Carson (26:17):
, that's the beautiful thing is with these vendors, you can set parameters of what you want to do. Like we bought a portfolio of 60 notes. I said, okay, here's what I'd like to do. Here's the options that we want to offer up these borrowers. And if they fall in that, great, you can approve the loan modification or the Trop payment plan. If they won't fall through this, then we want to expedite these to the legal side and go from there. So it's a, there's a lot of great ways to set systems up for you. Basically checking your email and checking spreadsheets and communicating back and forth that way without having to do a lot of borrower outreach yourself.

J.T. Smith (26:47):
So, correct me if I'm wrong, you teach this business as well, correct?

Scott Carson (26:51):
Yeah, I I've been teaching it. I had back when I started doing this in 2008 I had so many deals and I obviously I was brand new going through, I had gotten, went through the downturn, got my niece kicked in on a couple of bad deals that went South. And so I was like, well, I'm just like everybody else is going through the, the, the downturn here. So I started reaching out to the banks and had so many deals coming to me. If you were like, how are you doing these deals? , I just started teaching, people ask, what can you teach me how to do this? I'm like, yeah, there's plenty of deals to go around. And so I still believe that she'll think there's plenty of inventory up there. And so yeah, we've been teaching workshops on how to buy notes.

Scott Carson (27:26):
We used to call it note buying for dummies, but we changed it up to our virtual note buying workshop cause we do three to four big three day workshops online throughout the year teaching people how to find fund and flip. And then we're also for people that are curious, a little more curious about it, want to dip their toe in, in the water before diving in. We've got a, a couple of things that we call note weekend where it's a one day all day. Basically nine to six would just mean teaching kind of the one on one, no investing one on one of the basics of what note investing is and then go from there. And Austin are online. It's an online, I do everything online these days.

J.T. Smith (28:03):
Okay. Okay. Well I'll, I want to link to that. I'll put it in the show notes for anyone who's interested in finding out more about it. I'm, I'm a junkie for education myself. I like to know how to do things so you don't be surprised if I want that education myself. Sure. Would you say that at the same time, are there any books on the subject that are beneficial

Scott Carson (28:23):
So that, , there's a lot of videos online, which is probably the better place to start. There's a couple older ones by Oh no. If you look cashflow, not investing in, there's a few, there had been a few years ago, I've got a book actually I put together, it's a 73 page book. It's easy for people to read how to buy real estate for 40% off. If you want the book, I'm glad to give it away for free. You just got to know blueprint.com/free book and you can download the city three page book. And it's basically me just talking about what note investing is the basics of it. Great place to learn. , we've got the podcast obviously that we've spent a big chunk of time going through specific niches and civic nuggets on each episode and interviewing vendors and other investors on the business.

Scott Carson (29:10):
So that's probably the best place for people to go for the most part. But I mean Google is a beautiful thing. You do the beautiful thing and there's, I'm not the only person teaching this anymore. I'm, I'm very fortunate though that we've done a really good job and had a lot of successful students that have gone on and use note investing as a way to either leave their job that they just disliked or add money to their bottom line on a monthly or annual basis or, , going out and, and change the world that they're living in because they've done a great job in closing on deals. So for Repatha,

J.T. Smith (29:41):
Well, I like my teachers

Scott Carson (29:42):
To be people who have actually performed in the business. I'd like you to be making your money at the business, not at selling the education. So that's why I'm very cautious of who I collect information from. I want to know that you are actually in this business and successful at it. Oh yeah, man. I mean, I wish I could sit here and tell you every deal has been wonderful, but , you had, it's like anything else. You have ups and downs and deal some deals. We think we're going to get modified and then suddenly the bar goes quite honest and then we have to foreclose. The biggest thing, this is not a get rich quick scheme at all and if anybody ever tells you that they're lying to you this is a build a wealth thing. And then part of the reason I love the note business is because the banks are in the note business.

Scott Carson (30:25):
Everybody, everybody's in the, in the paper game, everybody's in the note business. It's just that most people are on the wrong side of the payment streams you're paying out versus coming in. And if you can understand how to arbitrage and leverage money, and I know you're a big fan of leveraging funds and debt and things like that. Correct. , there's a great way, that's why the banks are the biggest institutions in the country besides Amazon. , that's something to think about there. But yeah, we've, we've, I've closed on over a thousand deals, bought over a half a billion dollars in debt. I'm still have what, 325 loans on my portfolio that we're working through. A big chunk of this performing. Others are non-performing that we're working through to foreclose or work some sort of exit strategy with. So yeah, I, I eat and breathed this on a day in, day out basis.

J.T. Smith (31:11):
Well I thank you for your time. I'll let you get back to it before I do let you go. If there is someone who would like to reach out to you, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

Scott Carson (31:19):
Yeah, it's, it's, it's really easy. Our website is, we closed notes.com you can go there. Contact me there, checkout or different schedules and things we've got going on, but it's easy, scott@weekclosednotes.com is the best, , of course I'm on all the social media channels as well there, but Scott, we closed down and stuff. I comms the best email to reach me and glad to spend 20, 30 minutes, , talking with somebody and then let them pick my brain a little bit about the note business and what's right for them or it's not, I'll tell them

J.T. Smith (31:47):
So. Okay. And I do remember you saying that you'll probably be going to pod Fest. I'm not sure if I'll be making it this year. My goal is to do so. So I'll see you there. And I know you travel a lot, so if someone wants to meet up with you in person, I've met you before in person at events like that. So yeah, it's always good. And I appreciate you being a free with your information and time. You've been very helpful and, and just directing on certain things. So I appreciate that

Scott Carson (32:13):
Anytime, man. That's the beauty about going to conferences. And then what I love about the podcast industry is that you get a lot of people that have, are friendly and pulling each other ways. I mean, Europe, I had you on my episode. I'm excited that's coming out. February 27th, I believe is the date it'll be out live. The YouTube video replay is already out there as well. And it's been across our radio network as well too. But you, you do such a great job. You've got a passion as well. And if you're listening to this guy's on any podcast platform, dude, you tried T a big favor, go on over and hit the subscribe button and leave him a five star review. He didn't pay me to do that, although he's doing an amazing job and that's the beauty. There's, I don't think there's enough people out there that are providing the type of content that he's doing and, and, and really the , beneath the kimono kind of showing you what's working, what's not working and why he's so successful, what he does. So leave him a review and subscribe to the Atlanta landlord podcast and you'll, you'll make him happy. That is true. Thank you for your kind words. Thank you for your time today, Scott Scott, the note guy Carlson. I appreciate your time. Have a great 2020. You too. Bye. Thanks.

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