Watch for sellers who don't understand they won't hold the first-position lien. If they ask who pays taxes and insurance, they think they're in a land contract. Skip these calls: the education cost isn't worth your time.
If someone's coming to JV with me and asking me, one of the first questions I'm going to ask, "Does the seller know he's not going to be in first position?" And if he answers no, I'm probably not going to take the phone call, because there's a whole conversation that needs to happen. And what's going to happen is I'm going to get on the phone and give a world-class education to the seller and the buyer, and I'm going to waste my time. They're going to say thank you, and then I'm not going to get paid. Again, it's not about money, but going back to the scenario of if I'm working my ass off 16, 17, 18 hours a day, and I'm taking an hour of day out of my business, there's an opportunity cost, right? Like that cost me money to be on that phone call. I mean, that's just straight up. So that's one of the first things I want to know. Make sure that they're okay with not being in first position because a lot of times people are pitching seller finance, seller finance, seller finance, and seller finance to the seller means seller finance means they're in first position. When you start hearing questions like, okay, who's going to pay the taxes? And insurance? How are we going to handle that? Is the payment for taxes and insurance going to go to the seller each month, and then the seller is going to pay that? That is one of the number one questions I get asked that is like a red flag that says they don't know what's going on. Because if they knew they were not in first position and the bank, you know, you had a bank loan and like you're doing escrow and all that kind of stuff, they would know to not even ask that question. Because the fact that they're asking that question, they think this is a land contract. And that they're going to be in first position. That is exactly what's going through their head by asking that question. So hearing that, you need to know that's a cue that you need to take a step back and reiterate, hey, I just want to make sure you know, like, and go into the explanation of all that. So that happens a lot. I want to say 30% of the calls, like, I get those kind of questions that I have to, you know, okay, pause
