EP 642 - Commercial Property And Insurance Pitfalls In Distressed Assets With Stephanie Saunders

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This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property. For panties on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host CEO of We Close Nodes, Scott Carson.

Hey guys. Stephanie Saunders. And I'm with United Claims specialist and also have the Suskind Foundation. On this episode we'll be talking about property damage, insurance claims, the right property insurance you need to have and a little about notes.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closure show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here with the day. Even more jacked up and excited to have somebody that I connected with a while back on LinkedIn. That's why social media is so important. You never know who you're going to reach out to and connect with in one phase or facet and never know where they're going to go. And so I've been looking at my shows and looking at my content and I'm getting questions from people, hey, can you, can you have somebody come on and talk about insurance, property insurance, force place stuff? I was like, oh yeah, let me look at my LinkedIn. Oh, lo and behold, I know exactly the person I need to bring on here. So we are honored to have the person in charge of business development, the nationwide badass who actually understands the note business. She formerly was a note trader. We'll get more into that later on. Cause that's where originally connected. But we're honored to have the lovely Stephanie Saunders join us from Miami today from United Claims Services. What's going on, Stephanie? How's it going today?

Hi, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, no problem, no problem. So for those out there, I mean, we've got real estate investors that are both on the residential and the commercial side of the business. So why don't we talk a little bit or why don't we do this before we get into that nitty gritty share kind of your journey, how you went from where you're at to where you're at today.

Sure. So I originally was working for mortgage servicing companies during the last recession. And so from that I met a lot of people who were in the note trading world and I was dealing with a lot of different investors who were servicing the note trades in the bulk area. And it's funny to me, I'll say that I always stumble across people now that want to get into buying notes, and I'm like, but wait, do you know how to service notes? I'm like, you need to understand what's really going on before you just start buying notes. So I'd love to pick your brain on that. But after that, I really got into wanting to help people protect their investment. So it's understanding that even though you're an investor, you can still lose out on so many levels. It's not just a market flop, it's a fire. It's a bad incident where you were underinsured. So I found, like, it was something to be passionate about in uncovering money for people.

Yeah, totally. I see somewhere where you started a foundation to help people that are going through.

I did. I did. So during the pandemic, I started the Suskind Foundation. We started making donations for hand sanitizer and different things, but also really helping people find jobs and offering grants so that we can help people kind of change directions. So the reason I'm passionate about that is because I originally was going to be an attorney, and instead of going to law school, I could only get a job in the foreclosure world. So that was kind of how I got started on that distressed asset journey. And I ended up here. Here we are again. People losing their jobs. I'm like, you gotta shift. Right? So I wanna help promote that idea.

I love it, I love it. There's enough people out there that need it. I think I saw somewhere reading article, there's over 6 million homeowners and renters looking at potentially being evicted once everything kicks off and the next year, once that executive order expires. That actually has a big impact, not only just for the renters, the people living the property, but also the property owners as well.

Right, Sure. I mean, that's also really scary. Have you been paying attention to, like, the foreclosure trends at the moment? Yeah. I mean, look from an investment perspective, right? It's the same as it was in, oh, eight. We're all kind of watching and waiting with our mouths open because it's. It's time again, possibly. But I feel like it's going to be a much different market and it's also a scarier market because people didn't just take out bad loans. Now they're really in a bad spot. So I'm not clear. I'm following. We're seeing some counties are opening back up there. Their foreclosure process is. Do you have any insight on that?

You know, it's so different from state to state, county to county. I mean it all depends on who's passing the buck, whether the government. And I find that the governors don't want to be the bad guy. You know, we saw that where you're at in Florida and same thing kind of here in Texas, they're leaving it up to the mayors to do to make the decision. But then if you look at what's happening with what they're talking about us shutting down again for another four to six weeks, that's a whole nother wave of distress and people just can't afford that.

Right, right, right, absolutely. And in the commercial space, I mean I'm seeing that people are running to dump shopping centers, which was surprising to me because I mean you think about like Publix, they're doing better than they ever did. Right. Everyone's stocking up on home goods and food. So it's. Yeah, it's going to be an interesting little bubble that we see. It'll be much different than we've ever experienced.

Right. One of the things that we are seeing from our conversations with bankers here over the last 90 days and the phone calls I'm getting back from leaving messages is it's that small balance commercial stuff, you know, that 5 million and below that's really clogging up the bank stuff. Now how do you guys approach that from an insurance standpoint? If it's a distressed asset where somebody's still operating or it becomes a vacant asset, because that's just what they say, 50% of all malls are going to probably end up closing, hotels are struggling, restaurant space. How do you guys kind of cope with that ever increasing vacancy or empty factor we're seeing across the country?

So what's interesting is that so we do something different in the insurance world. So what I got into this was because obviously I was passionate about helping people when they have an incident. It was more that investor side of it because all these note buyers are typically of an investor mindset. Right. So they're buying assets to make a profit and that's the goal. So when I, when I originally started this, it was because I had a large client when I was in corporate, corporate at the mortgage servicing side. So they had all these bank owned properties that now had force based policies on them and they had an obligation to maintain during the field services aspect of it, the what do we call that? It's like, I'm trying to remember the term, but it's the field services division where they have to maintain the property.

So vandalism Property preservation side.

Exactly.

Especially as we get into the winter months, you know, making the winterization, making sure you don't end up with an inside water feature or skating rink if you're north of the Dixie line, you know.

Exactly. But it's so much more than that too. It's vandalism. It's not cutting the grass, it's overgrown trees. Right. If you're in an hoa, and I know a lot of banks, at the time, they had 50 homes in an HOA community. Right. It was massive. So they were getting slapped with fines. So anyway, they were having an issue with filing property damage insurance claims, so they didn't know how to handle it. And there were several larger, kind of like chop shops that were just doing them for the banks and they were leaking money. So I saw this as this strange opportunity to explore what public adjusting was. But most public adjusting firms, they don't want to take on this massive amount of business because they're not giving it that proper care. So I guess from our perspective with insurance right now, insurance is taking the position that they're not responsible for loss of business use or business interruption because Covid is a non property related issue. So it's a fine line. Right. There are some states or some attorneys who are trying to pursue lawsuits, so it's not really working out for them. But when you have a property damage claim and it's vacant, you actually can't file unless it's only been like a four month period. It's vacant for six months. They'll tell you that you have no claim, you have no right.

Yeah, that's a scary thing. That's why one of the things I love talking about when we're teaching our investors and our students is go after the occupied assets just for that alone. I mean, I bought enough vacant assets that got vandalized. I lost a lot of money up in Chiraq, as I like to say, Chicago. And that's a whole different story. And that's the same thing we've had insurance. I was like, oh, it's a vacant property. It's been vacant for longer than four months. You don't, you really don't have a claim. I'm like, how am I supposed to protect my investment? What kind of counsel we give to those that are looking to take over assets like that, those vacant properties that they can pick up for a huge steal these days?

So I think what's unfortunate is when you buy something that's as is and it's vacant. Right. You're going to be assuming whatever damage is there already. So if you're getting a steal, you're getting a steal. That's kind of it, right? Like be happy with that steal. But if you buy something and then six months in you have an incident, make sure you're properly insured. So you don't want to buy a shopping center or multifamily and then you didn't pull out the right insurance and you have some small incident that could cost you upwards of $250,000 depending on the size. So that's not a wise investment strategy.

Yeah, exactly. Now what's the primary asset classes that you guys are insuring these days? You know, single family homes or more commercial stuff.

We are not an insurance provider. We fight against the insurance provider. We literally represent the investor who pulls out the policy against their carrier when they have an incident there. You're a little bit on the dark side, some would say. We like to fight the 800 pound gorilla though. I exited that corporate matrix. I followed my passion in multifamily investing and no trading. And then I got into this wanting to help people and our particular bucket is really the larger losses. So we do a lot with an organization called icsc. It's the International Council of Shopping Centers. So we do a lot of that commercial business all over the US and then you know, like student housing and multifamily HOA communities.

So those are definitely varied, especially on the college housing side. Student housing side. That's taking a big hit here compared to a lot of your multifamily side, correct?

Absolutely. I mean, how many people are not in school? Like so many colleges are pulling out and I wonder, you know, it's a little scary to say but like, what's the future of college? Is it all going to be online? Just like all of our interviews now everything is online.

You know, it's hard to say that. I actually am friends with a college journalism professor. She's been trying to get her professors to go online to be able to enable kids instead of having a long commute. And a lot of the professors like, oh no, no, now they've been forced to do it and they're like, oh, we can actually get off, get rid of some staff. We can actually save a lot of costs by not having a physical classroom anymore and it's transition of anything.

Well, what do you think about some of these foreclosures that have happened on like the really high level or more like purchases in New York City? So I know that there was like an Apple Store that sold to someone and they're going to convert it like completely into like a residential space which is mind blowing to me. I think that's going to happen a lot.

I think if you look at that with the numbers being out there that 50% of malls are going to close. And I'm here in Austin, Texas, gorgeous spot. But we had a couple of years ago a major mall closed like you know and I'm got a new mall on the north side of town here. It's been around for a while. It's by Simon Properties who's really taking a difficult side of things. But I think you have to look at that. I've seen people taking a look at big box stores and converting them to self storage facilities. Taking something and turning the top level into an executive office so it's smaller stuff or turning it into multifamily if they have the availability to. You have to kind of pivot with what the market needs. I mean here we need affordable housing more so than we've seen that with hotels being converted to short term rentals for 12 to 24 months until the market comes back. So I think it's an opportunity. You just got to know how to make lemonade out of lemons, right?

Absolutely. I mean on so many levels for sure. Now I have a question. What do you think is going to happen with like the note world based on all of what we're looking at?

So I think in my spidey sense has been telling me for the last two years that commercial has been overpriced and a lot of things have been overpriced. We couldn't keep seeing it arise now from talking to bankers on a weekly basis. Like when I start seeing things like hotels selling at 20 cents of balance. You know, New York had a major hotel, $260 million loan on a 13,000 room hotel that the fund that owned the note was willing to sell it for less than 20 cents on the dollar. Okay. I think the note space in the commercial space specifically that smaller balance stuff for the most part is what's really clogging up the bank's books these days. But there's opportunity if you just know where to look. I think the residential side you're going to have the government backed loans, they're going to continue to kick the can down. Every six months we'll give you a forbe and delay things for six months. The biggest opportunity on the residential side is buying the second home loans or the investor loans that aren't government back secured. But there's still a big gap between what the banks don't want to take a loss for that and what investors want to pay. It's not 2008 yet. So there's a gap between that and it's also down the commercial side, the banks are waiting to see how are we going to get bailed out come December 15th. And that's going to affect a bunch of dominoes on their books.

Yeah, I agree with you definitely.

You know, and the thing you look at too, and I bring this up and that's why I asked about vacant property. You see an ever increasing amount of four lease signs everywhere, right. You know, and that's the thing you have to look at. Okay. Vacancy is supposed to be increased or decreased by another 20% even through next year too. You got to have that cash and got to have the team in place. You're going to take something over to make it suitable. And if you're counting on market rents today to be what they are next year, don't expect that you have to drop the rent right down quite a bit.

Right. Like we have some condo investments in south Florida and they have gone down. Tremendous values are down by, you know, $200,000 in a four month period of time. It's kind, it's unreal. Right. So it's also crazy because New York City, the values are going down, it's wild west. But they're all coming here and snatching off these condos at like the cheapest they've ever been. So it's really weird space to be investing. If you're buying right now, I think you're good because you're getting below market, which we haven't had a long time. It's been a long time.

I think that's totally the point. And it's all about knowing that existing market I'd be willing to look at. And I mean Miami's always in South Florida's always had a lot of investor money coming from outside areas, you know what I mean? And you look at the foreclosure trends, I think was it Miami beach is a higher foreclosure rates, all million plus homes on their condos. And that's the biggest hit, right? New builds. But that's the thing you look at New York has reduction in price. But if you look at the rural areas, the outside of the town, I think the properties are going continue to rise as people are moving.

So that's the, you know, the number one topic right now is the fact that all these rural areas are going to be like prime. And the fact that maybe you don't have to make such a commute going forward. You only need to go to the office two days a week going forward. Because companies are realizing that you can do so much from afar now. It's like, who really wants to live in a city? It's not about being so close to work. That's gonna be interesting to watch.

Yeah. You know when you're looking at a conversion on a property, like we were looking at this downtown executive office building, seventh floor, 110 plus doors that converted from an executive office suite to self storage.

Right.

And they filled it all up in less than like two weeks because it was all other buildings or offices closing. They were storing all their storage furniture in there for a period of time.

Right.

How do you guys evaluate and look at a lot of that stuff? I know that you're going after the insurance companies and stuff like that, but if it's something going through a transition period, are you guys really like, hey, you got to get on the ball to make sure this is rock and roll for you or running into delays?

I think that when you're doing that, I mean, are you saying from an insurance perspective, like if someone is purchasing something that was once a hotel and is now going to be like a mixed use storage unit, whatever. I think it really doesn't matter what you're utilizing it for. Right. From that aspect, when you buy something, you just want to make sure that you have the right insurance.

Right.

I don't even think that your insurance carrier cares what you're really using it for. Unless you're taking out a business policy where you want to cover your income and whatever machinery you have. Right. But I think it's really more just like your dwelling coverage.

Well, that's. Yeah, I agree to that. That's the thing that is so interesting these days is if it's not operating, it's not cash flowing Right. Then your noise reduced, your values drop, the cap rates drop. It's a slippery slope right now for banks that were they don't want to be above 60, 65% LTV, they're not at 70s, 80s, even 90s because values drop as the glutton of income falls or inventory increases. You know what I mean?

Right. You know, it's also though really I think important for people to know when it comes to the insurance world is you can buy something as an investor, as a, you know, it's your home, whatever it is, if you buy it. And there is something that is Found during the inspection phase. Like you find that there's a huge water leak issue or a roof problem or whatever non sexy problem there might be, you can have your seller reduce their their price and purchase it or you can tell them that you want them to file a property insurance claim and transfer the rights to you, which I wasn't aware of in the beginning pages of this. So it's totally legal. They give you the access to their prior policy and then you're fully covered. But if you buy it as is, then you insure it with a new policy and you are basically insuring it with all this prior existing damage.

Yeah, we see that on the note space. Especially since we don't often get interior inspections on a lot of the that they were buying. You know that's the scary thing, right. In a lot of cases with what you guys are doing, what's been one of the most interesting things with your guys business over the last nine months that you've seen? It's kind of shocked you with everything.

I think it's really the shocking thing is how many people assume that they were going to have the loss of use claim coverage. That's been pretty mind blowing. I mean massively affected businesses that cannot operate and losing by the millions and there is no recourse for them. That has been pretty shocking. And I feel like it's, you know, I don't want to do it the sob story or play the little violin, but at the same time I feel like there should be some responsibility from the 800 pound insurance gorilla.

Yeah, a little bit. Especially since they've been making money for so long hand over fist in some cases. You know what I mean?

Definitely.

You know, and especially if somebody has not filed claims for years. Forever. Yeah, exactly right.

Sometimes claim filing is like once in a lifetime. Listen, when you're an investor, it's funny because now when you get more educated on this and what your rights are when you're owning a physical dwelling, you realize, oh well that's covered under my policy. And you start to understand, oh, the carrier offered me $200,000. It's probably worth eight because they're never going to come in and give you the full value. So I think you may end up filing more frequently as you buy more property when you get educated on this. But most people, once in a lifetime, right.

Now that brings me to a question there. With what you guys are doing, what are some of the, I guess you'd pay me the top two or top three things that you're helping Your insisting your clients with on a regular basis.

So like the most commonly filed loss. I think the most commonly filed loss surprisingly is a simple water loss. So you have a multifamily building and you have the top floor has a water leak and it's a simple, you know, something with the shower and it goes all the way down to the other unit and the other, the common area. Some people think, okay, I'm just going to own a dryer, a blow dry machine and I'm going to put the blow dryer machine in every hallway and we're good, no problem. And then six months later everyone is sick and has some sort of infection because they've been breathing in mold. And now you're liable and then you have to rip up everything and start all over and probably relocate your tenants and it's a disaster. When you should just probably right away get remediation, make sure you have coverage and resolve it. But on that topic, insurance companies recently did away with, or not did away with, reduced drastically the cap on what they give you for water losses because they're the most commonly filed ones. So now they usually cap you out about $10,000 of coverage, which is nothing.

It'S nothing at all.

Yeah, that'll cover half of a room. So you have to pay about $100 a month more for 80,000 of coverage. So it's very inexpensive. But it ends up being a huge thing for you in the end.

Well, especially if you're in different areas of the country too. I think about Houston, you know what I mean? Houston, it just floods there all the damn time with a half inch of rain. It gets hit by hurricanes and that's one of the biggest things. That kind of issue happens all the time in that area.

Right. And I don't want to complicate it too much, but I'll tell you that flooding isn't even covered under your homeowner's insurance policy. It's a completely separate FEMA regulated policy that pays minimally. So you have to know all this stuff. When I started buying multifamily, I had no idea. Like I thought flood insurance is all I need because I'm in Florida. Like I don't need anything else. But you need wind, you need to be careful.

Yeah. We've got some friends that bought a property down on my sunny shores, I think it was. And they went with the normal insurance. They didn't add that extra policy. And now the costs from the damage are killing the deal. They're in the red instead of being in the black. And you've got to really know what's going on with that market.

It's all about the investment. I mean, I think even when you're buying your baby that you want to live in or whatever it is, it's still, you have to look at it from the investment perspective. Right? You're hoping you're always going up.

Now, question for you. Would you live in Miami? And there's talk about Miami being underwater, in pain, sorry, starting to flood. Let's talk about that. What's your opinion and thoughts on that when it comes to.

Listen, I think it'll happen, but I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime. I mean, I hope it doesn't. I think we do enough but like we're so. We're like buried every time it rains. So one day you'll probably see Miami under really. And I don't think that there's enough you can do. I mean they're constantly building up and you know, erosion protection, but like there's just. You can't fight mother nature that hard, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

Now I have a question for you though. You know, so many people that I know are they're so interested in discussing notes, right? But what do you say to the average person who is just trying to learn about notes? How do you help guide them into breaking the barrier, into doing their first deeds?

The biggest thing is make sure you buy right. You gotta know value, you gotta know title, you gotta check your taxes. And if the price makes sense, buy. You're gonna learn more from pulling it the trigger on the first deal than you will to anything else. So maybe you're not going for that million dollar condo. Maybe you're buying a $30,000 property in Columbus, Ohio or Ackerd or something like that. That can make sense. And don't trust, but verify. Never trust what the value of the seller tells it is. Double check, it's with a servicing company, so it's been collecting the payments or handling the legal side. You're going to learn more about taking action. I mean, I've been teaching note investing for over a decade now. And there's a lot of steps that you go into. You have to come from a different mindset. That's one of the biggest mistakes I think we see with investors is they're used to watching, you know, flip this house or flip or flop, you know what I mean? It's a total different world. And I'd love to come back to that because you've been on that legal Side right beforehand. Was that a big eye opening experience for you going through that?

Well, sure. So that's why it's so interesting for me is because I have this completely different perspective of notes. Right. I saw, I know the back end, I know the servicing side, I know all the platforms, how it works. So when I was doing the no trading, it was bulk trading, it was by the thousands. But they were. These companies were more like REITs and organizations. They were servicing the notes. And so it's just such a different market. So it's almost hard to flip from that side to the consumer side and say, okay, how do I look at this just from a fresh set of eyes and get rid of all that cloud.

Yeah, well, that's the thing. So many people get so tied into the real estate side. I'm picking up paint and carpet and rent rate and I'm like, the banks in the notes space aren't in the property management space. They're in the cash flow space, the note space.

So you are the bank.

Exactly. And the thing is, you no pay, you no stay, but you've got.

Exactly.

You know what I mean? You've got to come to the point. The biggest mistake I made my first two years in business, Stephanie was approaching it like that, that I was going to foreclose on everything right when I should have been doing loan mods initially with people to start having that cash flow come in immediately. Not having to fork out servicing costs all the time for non performing or legal costs and then repair costs. If somebody was willing to live in the property, I should have been a little bit more willing to work with them initially.

That's the biggest mistake, is that you end up on your ass because of all the. Yeah, the legal fees and servicing costs. Absolutely.

Yeah. And people don't realize that. I'm like, it's not. You're not in the property space. Don't fall in love. I always call it OTSC syndrome. Oh, that's so cute. And you know, don't do it. Look at the spreadsheet. Know what your exit strategies are. Know that it's gonna probably be one of three strategies. We actually did a webinar last night to our students about taking a look at the spreadsheet and running your numbers and falling in love with numbers versus the property is one of my.

Of course. Yeah. Different mindset.

Yeah, you have to be. And that's the same thing. I want to get upping to commercial notes too. Gotta be a different mindset on that as well too. For you.

Definitely. Definitely.

You mentioned about loving and diving into multifamily investments. How'd you kind of, how'd you make that transition into that?

So I think really it all comes back from my making a good thing out of a bad experience. So getting a job during the last recession led me to a full on 360 degree view of the distressed market from the attorney side, from the servicing side, from the lender side. So I really realized how easy it was to just dive into multifamily. If you do it wisely, you buy, you get a good deal. On multifamily, you've got what, six units or more that you're now bringing income in on. You insure it properly. Right. So it's funny we say in my industry now with the property damage stuff, every person that's in this space that's like fighting the 800 pound gorilla typically started with an incident of their own. So they bought something like I did, didn't insure it properly, had to pay, major mistake and then you delay, you keep it or you dump it right away at a loss and then you're waiting two more years to recover and make a profit. But I think that multifamily is like, it's the best, it's very lucrative and profitable. And I think we're going to see a lot of multifamily leaving great deals right now.

Yeah, especially in the student housing aspect of things. I think they say national average is around 85% on the rent collections right now over the last nine months, but it's less than that on the student housing side. So then that's the one asset banks realize the value out of them. They see, oh, everything's selling above value. The idea, and here's the thing, when you get into the multifamily side, the idea is, oh, we're going to take something down, regentrify it, increase the rents and get refinanced out in three years.

Right.

And I think the opportunity is gonna be exactly like it was in 2008, 9, 10. You had all these people that bought in, financed it, was syndicated with the idea that they were gonna be able to cash out. And I don't think those loans are gonna be there to cash out in the next 12 to 24 months.

No, no, I'm already seeing that people are trying to run, but the problem is, is that there are so many people with their mouths open right now that have been waiting for the inventory to become available that their bidding wars are starting. So that'll be around for I Think the beginning of this and then, yeah, the 12 months or so, it'll be a little more competitive.

Well, and that's also the nice thing about being in the notes space is if you can detect in, you're gonna see deals six to 12 months before it ever goes at reo or hits the foreclosure auctions or that kind of.

Aspect of things, Right, Absolutely.

And so, you know, that's the thing. So you're targeting. That's what I'm gonna ask next here. You've got your experience. What's the deals that if you see something, you're just like, buy, buy, buy, you know what I mean? You're ready to cash in and get rocking and rolling. What's your sweet spot, Stephanie?

You know, I think for now I want to be local. Right. So I think eventually I'd like to be in some other. So we have offices in other locations. We have an office in New Jersey. We're there often where we have one in la. I'd love to buy something there, but I want to be in a sweet area in South Florida. And when I got into this, it was already gone. You know, I was working through the whole recession and foreclosures, so I learned it, but I didn't get the opportunity to grab like a steel. So I think I'm just waiting for something that is, I know, definitely way below market and in a good area and I'm going to jump all over it. That needs a little bit of reno, right? That's what I'm looking for.

Yeah. I don't think we'll see the days where you can pick up Miami beach condos for five or ten grand by buying the Note and then having to wait two years to foreclose. I wish I could go back and buy more.

They won't be that sweet, but I think they'll be sweeter than they've been the past, you know, five years.

Oh, yeah, definitely. I also, I made a lot of money and bought a lot of stuff in southwest Florida, down Cape Coral, Naples, Lehigh Acres was a really valuable area. Fort Myers, neck of the woods. You know, that is really a valuable spot, too.

That's a very good spot. And I would consider that like a sweet spot for me. I mean, if I could find something that was multifamily in that market that was the right price, that's not just sitting there. Yeah, I would be all over that too.

Now, are you looking to raise capital or you put a fund together or raising capital using your own funds or other Investors.

I think maybe I would do that one day. But for now, it's just me. It's just me. And I'm using my own capital, but I'm open to it. You know, if I had some. You know, it's funny. I don't want to say bad things about anybody, but Miami is not a very high working place. There's not a whole bunch of professionals here. So if I found the right little group of people, maybe I would consider it. But as I say, local, I think I'll stay solo.

That makes sense. Don't have to give up half. We're even starting to see. I just had a conversation about an hour ago with a group out of Florida that's actually financing debt purchases, which I found interesting. It is interesting. Eight plus two. You know, they'll finance up to 75% of the note purchase price as long as it doesn't exceed 50% of as is value.

Right. Okay. That's smart.

It is smart. And I was asking so. Well, we're looking more commercial at minimum loan amounts, 2 million. I was like, okay, that means if you've got a half a million or, you know, right around there on a $2 million property, could come in and do pretty good stuff with it.

Sure, sure. And they're doing a lot more than I'm looking for. Just like one or two things, you know, they're probably trying to buy up the whole state.

Well, they weren't that far yet. And they were looking like, we love even. They're like, we love hotels. I was like, okay, that could be a quality depending up. Because there's enough of those hotels on south beach or other areas in Miami, and that's been.

South beach is going to be a tragedy. I would say it already really is. But it's. With what has happened, it's completely out of commission. So, you know, people ask me all the time, what's going on with COVID And I'm, like, thinking about whether I believe what's on the news or. But what I'm seeing is there is no real movement in Miami Beach. There's no hotel accommodations. No one's coming here. Like, they're gonna be at a commission for years.

Yeah. Same thing up. Was it 91 all the way up to Orlando's the same way. Orlando's been one of the hardest hits. I think Orlando ranked number three, L.A. was number one. No. San Diego number two, as far as hotel delinquencies. And then Miami was like, four or five, which is ridiculous.

Yeah. We're seeing Some foreclosures starting in like the commercial, like mixed use, the residential. But there's hotels right there. Yeah, yeah.

That's the thing that's going to be hitting the market first is the commercial foreclosures. The REOs are going to be around for a while. It's going to be a while for that. But tap into the notes space now. Are you tapping in, are you reaching out to any old cohorts to say, hey, do you got anything on your portfolio you're looking to move?

You know, listen, so some stuff comes across my desk pretty frequently. So when there are like packages that are being sold or traded or then I do have lots of people that are interested, I haven't been diving in. But listen, if you're looking for some inside info that you don't have, which I'm sure you have all the same info as me, but I'd be happy to share it with you.

Oh yeah. Always glad to see some stuff because there's a lot, like I said, we're getting more phone calls and email backs that we've gotten in like couple years.

People are wising up listening to you educate on how this works and make a profit on it.

Well, even the funny thing is the banks, even the bankers are like, okay, I know. They're like, we know we're gonna have to move something now, you know, like Florida Capital bank down your neck of the woods. I was talking to the asset manager over there and he was like, yeah, everything we have is that small balance. Commercial, small, multifamily, small offices, small stuff like that. We just haven't got the green light to start selling yet because the board's waiting to see what's going on. I'm like, okay, I hope I'm on your speed dial list.

Right, right, right. Do you think that the GSE preventing everyone from moving forward? Yeah, but I think it's because they set the precedent right. So they're just going to follow like they know the private lenders could do something, but it's like, how did they look then?

Yeah, that's the thing. It's a hurry up and wait kind of thing. Let's see what happens from the big, you know, with Trump or Biden, what's going to be their thing and then it'll all kind of roll downhill from there.

2020 is the hurry up and wait year. I think we're going to coin it for that. That's it.

Yeah, hurry up and we can't wait for 2021 to arrive.

It'll Be the same. No, I'm just kidding. Hopefully not. I didn't say that. I'm knocking on wood.

Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, let's talk about. I'm fascinated with your foundation. Are you working with people just there in the South Florida area or other areas of the country? Let's talk about that.

What's amazing about this foundation is, especially during this time, is I think so many people want to find a way to give back or how to somehow, even if they're not in a good position, just do something to be there for. People like, you never know who's listening to you and what impact you might have on someone's life. So we have several people that are in New York and in Texas, actually, that are mentors and therapists. So they're offering their services online, and we're pairing them up with mentor or people who are looking for mentorship, whether it's related to career success or what to do right now, or if it's just counseling because they're having so much grief. So we are not just focusing on Florida. We're kind of going wide in that mentor world, which has been so rewarding. You know, so many young people, like, hey, you know, I just finished college, and I was gonna start working in commercial real estate, and now I don't know what to do.

Right.

And so I partnered her with a couple of people, and we're just kind of trying to do whatever we can to help people keep going. Right. You gotta pivot. And there are a lot of good people out there that want to help.

Yeah, that's one big thing. I think we see that here in Austin. We see people that have an MBA that are trying to get a job, that are waiting tables or bartending, and that's been shut down. So they're having to try to figure out whatever the heck can do to make that extra, you know, that money to pay the bills or to even that side hustle has gone away, and they've got to figure out a new thing.

Right. Well, and also, there are so many places right now that are doing granting for continuing ed for, like, a course. So let's say you've been out of school for a little while, you had an mba. Your entire career in whatever banking has just gone flop. Now what do you do? Do you get into social media marketing? You know, it's a. How do you shift yourself? So you gotta find, like, the market that's thriving. But there are grants available to offer you free courses so you don't have to spend the money on a course. But then again, we get into that whole discussion of, is school really the way to go now? Yeah, I won't open that door. I won't open that do.

No, that's a Pandora's box we will keep close for you. But that's, you know, that's an interesting thing. What is the best way for those that are listening out here on our radio network from Florida to LA and everything in there, if somebody's looking to get involved, to find out more information about that and how they can either plug in resources.

What's the best way for the foundation? Just. So I'm all about LinkedIn marketing right now. I don't know if anybody else is on that train, but I have met more business professionals, more and people looking to do investing and just, just doing mentorship stuff on LinkedIn than I ever would have imagined just since the pandemic. And I've been on there for years. It used to be a resume platform. Right. So I'm on LinkedIn. Stephanie Saunders. But we have a website also for the foundation. It's called the Suskind foundation and it's S U S K I N D I think dot org. And then as far as the property stuff, you know, listen, if you're investing and you're buying actual property, you want to make sure you have the right insurance. If you don't have an incident, you don't need somebody like me, but you should always have someone represent you if you have an incident. But if you don't, just make sure you have the right insurance and we'll help you make sure you do. We're not writing policies, but we're happy to review what you're taking out for your investment, to just set you on the right track so you don't have a problem one day.

Well, that's. Glad you brought that up. So you don't mind if people reach out to you to do the. Exactly that.

No, I'm happy to help. Listen, I'm all about being. Being an advocate. I like to help people, obviously. Listen, I like to make money too. Right. I'm not just trying to give people free things, but at the same time, I think everybody needs to know what they have a right to. Right. So, yeah, I'm happy to always give free advice when it comes to making sure you know what you pulled out.

Yeah, that's one of the biggest things. I've got a buddy who's an attorney who sues a lot of insurance companies as well. When it comes to malpractice stuff like that. He's like, oh, there's a lot of things you don't know. You got to make sure. Especially when you. It's different than just buying a single family home. When you start taking it to a different level.

Yeah.

From residential to the commercial side, it is a whole different ball game. And if the new rules, new laws, you got to understand.

Right. But it's even. Even when you buy a residential property, like I'm telling you, my grandmother had no idea that she didn't have a certain coverage. And I'm like, I can't do anything to help you. Like, we just have to pay for it. Like, that's. It's out of pocket expense. At least it's on investment property. It's your home, whatever. But that company, for the free take or if you ever have property damage, is United Claims specialist.

And we'll have a link to that and the link to your website for your charity in the show. Notes are over there for you as well. For you, Stephanie, it's been a pleasure. I'm glad we were able to jump back on and reconnect on this stuff. Lots of nuggets out there. Lots of value in today's episode out there. Where's the next vacation? I know you just got back from Cabo and you said it was a little interesting. That's the one thing I miss the most, is the travel aspect of things.

Same here. I'm so thankful, like I said to you before, that we were able to get out of town. Just change of perspective, change of scenery. But, you know, places don't. They don't have it together yet. You know, they're trying to. There's all these rules. You have to reserve the gym, you have to reserve the pool chair. So I think I'm gonna be okay for about six more months. I think I can hang out until maybe there's a vaccine or something. But I'd like to go to Italy, so maybe that'll be next. Hopefully it's in 2021.

You know, that's one of our favorite spots out, is going to Italy. The food, the flavor of the people, the sites, the museums. I'm willing to bet, if you're interested, there's probably a real estate boom going on for somebody wants to come in and pick up some chateaus or some things in Italy right now. I know. Actually, I know that one city. It reminded me a lot of what Washington, D.C. went through and some other areas where they were doing. If you bought a chateau, you had up to three years to bring it back up to date and basically get it for free for the most part in so many cities.

Oh, I'm all about it. Tell me where I'm going, that's where I'll be till the vaccine comes out.

Then there you go. Exactly. Just a matter of being able to get in and get it back out.

Exactly.

Good stuff. Well, hey, so thanks again, Stephanie, for coming on the Nook Clues show. Love it and appreciate it and we'll stay in touch. Alrighty.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks. All right, guys and gals, don't go anywhere. You know, if you're going to do something and take advantage of what the market's going to offer you, do like Stephanie says, make sure you got the right type of insurance, the right protection in case act of God or something happens out there. Make sure your insurance matches up with what your exit strategies are. And if you're looking to do some good and help out people, check out her charity out there and her foundation and give. Because that's one of the best ways to help people out is just help somebody out. You never know what your advice, your counsel, your background can help to overcome some obstacles. So go out, take some action, everybody, and we'll see you off the top, everybody. Bye.