How Scott Carson "The Note Guy" Went From Thousands To Millions With Scott Carson From Uncommon Real Estate With Chris Craddock

Welcome to Uncommon Real Estate, where it's all about finding creative solutions for real estate agents and investors. In exclusive Mastermind conversations with some of the brightest minds in real estate, you'll learn how to earn an extra six figures a year. Don't follow the herd. Be uncommon. Here are your hosts, multi millionaire real estate agent and investor Chris Craddock and Jeff Seyfright.

Hey, friends. Welcome back to another episode here of Uncommon Real Estate. Your host, Chris Craddock and myself, Jeff Seyfright. Today we got a guest on special guest with us, Scott Carson. Chris, why don't you introduce Scott a little bit here and let's get rolling.

So, Scott, so again, the whole thing that we're all about here is uncommon. You know, there's common people, Common people do common things. And to be uncommon, you got to be separate, you got to be different, you got to be different than everybody else. Think differently, do different things, and the market rewards you differently. Right? And so that's the whole thing right here. Scott's known as the note guy. And I'll tell you what, a lot of people, people read Rich Dad, Poor dad, a lot of people read a lot of these books about real estate, get us into it, and then you start realizing that real estate is awesome and there are so many ways to make a lot of money in real estate and there really are riches in the niches, right? So this is it. So this is one of the things I learned a lot about years ago when I went to a self directed IRA conference and all these guys that I was talking to is the first time I really was able to dive deep into it and realize, man, this is an insanely awesome, incredible place to be in. And Scott is one of the top guys in this space. So we've got a real treat for us. So Scott, why don't you share with us a little bit about yourself.

Hey guys, honored to be here today. It is definitely a different world than it was a week ago, I think, when we first connected. But hey, honored to be here, guys. And once again, yeah, thanks, man. Not across the country as the note guy. The last 12 years I have focused on the niche of distressed note investing, non performing notes, residential commercial properties. And so I started as a real estate investor 2002. You know, me and my now ex wife loved HGTV, flipped this house and all that stuff. I grew up in a hardware store so I could fix anything. So I thought after we bought our first house and the realtor is like, why don't you buy an Investment property. I was like, oh yeah, sure, sure, I can fix anything. I can be Tim the Tool Man Taylor. You know, we know how that worked out. Lost my ass on my first couple of investment property. Bought full price retail. The only person that made any money was a realtor, the commission side of things, and then bought two investment properties. I was making good money as a financial advisor for a company here in Austin. Wife was working, especially teacher. And we did like a lot of people did, you know, we buy our first house, you furnish it with nice stuff because you're like, oh, I got to keep up the Joneses. And two investment properties, like I said, that we bought. And then suddenly things ended. Dell laid off a bunch of employees which happened to be my two tenants when they moved their manufacturing and shipping that over to Memphis. Then I get called into the office with the rest of the staff and they close our offices basically overnight. We had some savings, but not a lot as young kids, but then, so we went from making, you know, living pretty decently, making six figures a year to making and trying to pay six mortgages, three first three seconds on a private school teacher salary of 36 grand a year. And with deadbeat tenants that couldn't, they couldn't work, they didn't have rent. So I make the joke that I was a deadbeat borrower, distressed borrower, back in 2002, three and four for a little while, but fortunately got in the mortgage industry. Started a mortgage company with a buddy of mine. We were traveling the country at these big expos, big events and doing creative financing, owner financing, but doing also mortgages for investors and did that really well and learned I was very fortunate at that four year period. I learned a lot of creative strategies, different strategies that people aren't on. Wholesaling options, subject to deals, wraparound mortgages, all this great stuff for four years. And then when everything hit the fan in the last recession, I jumped ship from the origination side and just started calling banks, calling real estate hedge funds, and started buying the debt at a discount. You know, we had 15 million homeowners underwater that owed more than what their property's worth. And we were buying a lot of it for as little as like, you know, one cent on the dollar what was owed. Back in the day I was buying Miami condos for like five grand that looked out over the ocean, you know, back in the day because the banks are just wanting to get rid of, off their books. And so for the last 10 plus years, that's kind of what we have done. Nothing but do is focus on non performing and performing notes. And that's been our niche. You know, not everybody teaches. I think one of two, three people teach in the country. But in the last 10 years, we've bought over a half a billion dollars in distressed debt and really helped a lot of investors. A lot of our students do really great things and go out and we like to say, make America great again, one distressed borrower at a time.

That's awesome. So after you lost everything. Because I think this is really a great time in our, you know, with the whole coronavirus. I think we were talking about this earlier, before we started. The reality is, I mean, the economic result could be catastrophic. We just don't know what it's going to look like. And so a lot of people are going to be in a place where they're going to have to restart and reinvent themselves. And so can you just, just. I know you brushed over that real quick, but can you just kind of share with us the process that you went through and reinventing yourself and like really getting there? Because I know you kind of brushed over, but it'd be great to like really.

No, no, no. I think that we all need to share our trouble because everybody sees the iceberg. They don't see what's underneath the water where it took you to get to the top. They don't see the difficult time.

So yeah, let's set the table real quick because I want you to get into that. But you know, oftentimes you hear this, you know, it takes money to make money, right? And if I heard you correctly, you were basically at this bottom point of living off of a $36,000 a year private school teacher salary. So that kind of sets, I think, the plate for a lot of people. Right? So go ahead. I just want, I just want to make sure that Everybody heard that. 36,000, not six figures, not all of this other stuff. 36,000. Now go for it.

So what we did is the first thing we did. We cut expenses. We cut as much expenses as we could, get rid of all the luxuries for the most part. We sold car down to a one car household here in Austin, Texas, which is not easy because it's got the worst traffic problems in the country. But then we worked our butts off. I got the two investment properties, we got them sold on short sales. We basically did what we could. We kept our primary residence by doing a loan mod. We communicated with the bank. And that's, that's one thing I want, if anybody's listening to this episode, which we know they are, and you're dealing with issues. Communicate with your bank ahead of time. Don't wait till you're 90 days, 120 days behind to communicate. I mean, Trump just signed in a thing just a few hours ago about canceling foreclosures and evictions for a while. But the more you can communicate with a bank, the friendlier they can be. And that's what I did. I commuted with the bank. We kept a primary residence, thank God, through a loan mod and a forbearance agreement. And I did what I had to do. Now, I'd gotten my teeth kicked in chasing that real estate investor dream, but I didn't give up on my dream. You know, I went and did what I could. I worked. I bartended for a while at Sheely's and waited tables. I worked for FedEx Home Delivery during the holidays, delivering packages, getting paid A$150 per delivery. I did what I had to to get my assets out of a sling, if you know what I mean, and then just kept it open, did whatever I could. I, you know, told people that I owed money to, said like, don't give up on me. I can't send you five grand, but I can send you 500 bucks. You know, I owe you, you know, 10 grand on this old deal that went south. Hey, we'll get it paid. Give me just, just believe in me and I'll show it insurance. You will think we took care of everybody. So well appointed. We got out of that. We started this mortgage company, was doing well, things are rocking and rolling. And then of course the market changed again on me. But I was smart enough to see the writing on the wall. When I had a guy who had like a 530 FICO score, got 100% financing on his investment property and nobody else would prove it. This one company comes up like, something's not right about this. And the last two years before I was 49, like my Spidey sense has been like going crazy because I'm seeing those same type of stupid programs, you know, 100% financing or they'll donate the down payment and they'll give you like 7,500 towards closing costs. I'm like, if somebody doesn't have any skin in the game, there is no investment on their part. They're not going to stick around. They're going to go move back in with mom and dad or go rent a place before the credit gets too bad. So I did whatever I needed to do 2000. I got divorced. As I say, I lost 125 pounds overnight because I got divorced and just did what I needed to do. I stopped focusing. I got rid of my rentals, I rid my real estate properties because property values are starting to decrease. I didn't hold out. I tried to take the emotion out of it. Hey, what can I sell this for now? Let's get it closed. Because cash is king in a time like this for two reasons. One, having cash allows you to do some things and also pay your bills. But B, it also gives you the cash and the opportunity. So when things pop up, you've got the ability to act now to grab those deals up. And fortunately for me, I was very, very lucky to have that opportunity. I didn't have any kids or don't know if I have any kids that I don't know of anyway. But 2010, I sold everything I owned in Austin, Texas and I went on the road. You know, no kids, no wife, just me and my dog. And what kind of led up to this is kind of interesting story. I'm a big baseball fan. I'm sitting around here March 2010 watching all the commercials for the start of major league baseball and I'm like, man, I would love to go to all the parks. What would that look like if I were just to take off? I've got the opportunity now. I'm not married and I don't have trapped these things I need to worry about. So I wrote out this plan to hit all the 30 league major league baseball parks over like a 36 week period. Before this, I'd already started marketing. As I was buying notes or I was calling bankers, I shared my successes and I shared my failures. Like my most popular video on YouTube or Vimeo was me making three hours of phone calls to banks and getting hung up on 95% of the time or me. You know, and the one nugget I get turns into a $50,000 payday. Cause I can wholesale a note or I can flip an apartment note to somebody in 24 hours and make 30, 40, 50 grand.

So I just want everybody to get this. Cause I mean, I made that like little quip, you know, everybody wants to be the beast. Nobody wants to do what the beast does. You know, everybody's all about the outcome, but they hate. But the second the process is hard, here's the legitimate truth. And this is what I'm seeing. I mean I run with a lot of guys that are doing really, really well. And, and here's the one thing that I've learned is everybody has to choose their pain. We're all going to have some sort of pain. And you know, Scott was working a couple jobs. He was doing everything he could. He was grinding, he was doing everything to make it work. He chose that pain versus the pain of regret, which you get if you don't actually do it. Because how many people have lived their life and thought, oh, I could do what they do, I could do what they do, I could do what they do. But they never pay the price, and so then they'll never achieve that. And then they're always upset, they're regretting the fact that they never did what they wanted to do. So you got to choose your pain. The short term pain of grinding and paying the price or the long term pain of regret. That's it. That's it. So anyway, I see that, I see that in everybody that's uncommon. I just wanted to make sure that everybody gets that you didn't happen into. And I'll say this one last thing. I was just talking to one of my sons who's wanted to do a gaming YouTube channel and literally we were talking about everything and he was like, man, dad, these guys that did it, they got lucky because all these people ended up, you know, they started, they saw it and they thought it was really cool what they did. I was like, son, they did not get lucky. I was like, maybe there's a piece of luck to it. But I was like, that's the smallest little piece ever. These guys did. They paid a price. They paid a price. And so I set him up and I've given him all this homework and all the stuff he's going to have to do before. And I said, I'll be your investor, I'll pay for all the stuff you need, but you have to pay the price first. You know, I'll be the monetary guy as long as you pay the price. So anyway, I see that with everybody that is successful, they've chosen the short term pain to get the long term success. And I want to make sure nobody missed that. So anyway, sorry, go ahead, Scott.

When you're delivering these packages for A$50 a delivery, right? Every one of us are, every one of us has this internal, like narrator telling a story about who we are. What story was this internal narrator telling? And how were you? I mean, I mean, maybe it was a champions, you know, narrative of like, man, I'm, you know, I'm climbing to the top and I'm in a roar with Rocky But I'm guessing that if it's anything like mine, it's kind of a. It's a negative voice, right? And how did you. How did you battle those thoughts, right, to get.

So here's the thing. It was not all positive, positive talk. And anybody tells you that, it's full of bullshit. I listened to a lot of tapes. I listen to a lot of stuff. Like, I had a chance to meet Mark Victor Hansen, and there was a tape series, CD series that he was listening to. And I got a chance to meet him, and I went into. Listen, I was going to do this rough time, and I was listening to this and help me get me through this to think. He's like, you know what, Scott? He goes, I delivered that. I recorded that when I was going through one of my worst times, you know? And that's. That helped me get through it. And then speaking now, like, oh, I felt like you were talking to me. And that's the reason. So I felt horrible. I'm like, I was making money, you know, I was doing, you know, I was doing good. I'm a failure. You know, I'm stupid. I'm an idiot. I'm sitting out here, climbing up a truck Christmas Eve. I'm driving around the cold, trying to deliver packages. At the last minute, there's this car behind me, this Volkswagen Bugs, like, trying to, like, for like, two miles down the road. They're, like, trying to pull me over. I'm like, what the hell? So I pull out, and this Good Samaritan gets out of her car. She's like, your back gate of your FedEx truck is wide open, and you've had five packages fall off. Oh, no, we have them all here for you. I was like, God, thank you. Thank you so much, God. Because we all have guardian angels. Seriously. So a month later, I reached back out to my friends, and when you're struggling, I think it's hard to reach out because we don't want to talk. We don't want to sit there. Like, I'm such a failure. They're doing so well. You never know who's going through or what cross people are bearing. So I reached out to Buddy. He's like, dude, I'd love to talk with you. Let's get. Let's, you know, let's get you aboard. Let's. I need some help. I'm like, oh, my God, thank you. And so, you know, when we really needed a, you know, steady paycheck, I was like, I'm doing this thing, and my wife's like, okay, if it works, great. If not, I know you'll go back to waiting tables, going back to FedEx, do whatever you need to do to survive. And that's sometimes what you got to do is just put the, A lot of people are going to be going through that here right now. You, sometimes you just got to get a job to live your dream for a while to get beyond that. I mean, note investing is not a get rich quick scheme by any means. It is a build wealth over time. And I tell people that all the time. But 95% of people won't do anything. I mean, we teach workshops and we'll have 300, 400 people through it. And the way I can always tell who's going to be successful is I do something a little bit different is those that come to my workshop. I literally give you the attendance list. Virtually, I'm like, hey, here's who's everybody that was there. That way you can connect with everybody, you can build your networks. He's in Columbus, she's in Michigan, he's in Florida. This way you now have a network. So when you get deals, you can reach out to you. You don't have to come through me. And the number one way I can tell success is if somebody sends an email out to the whole group within 48 hours. Now I put my, I put a fake email on there with the different names so I can see it so they just don't delete my name off of there. But that's how I tell when people are gonna be successful. They send an email out to the database, within 40 hours they're taking action. And only about 5% of people are action takers out there. And so I'm just in that 5%. I mean I saw banks that were selling assets that I could track. I'm like, Capital One is selling assets. So I started dialing for dollars. I didn't have the right number. I get transferred. I mean, over three weeks I made 70 phone calls to Capital One. And I can't tell you how many times I get transferred to Pakistan or India. And the guy's like, hello, my name is Steve.

I'm like, no, it's not.

But on the 70th phone call, I get transfer to the right lady, Amy out of New York. Thirty minutes later she sends me a PDF, a 33 page PDF with all their non performing commercial notes below a million dollars in value in six point font. It was so freaking, it was just filled page after page. And I'm like, I can't buy this all. No. She's like, just buy something. So I bought a note off of there, flipped it for 35 grand, another apartment, a 21 unit apartment complex note. It's like 33 cents of value. It was ridiculous. Flipped it for 100 grand. That 70th phone call, if I not had done it, was a million dollar phone call. And so everybody's just one connection away from something bigger happened. You just don't know how many phone calls, how many no's it's going to take for you to get to that. Yes. And I'm just a bulldog. You're not going to outwork me. You're not going to out market me. I'm going to do the extra 5% that most people aren't willing to do. That's what separates the winners from the losers there. Like Kris was saying.

Absolutely. Yeah. Do your job and a little bit more. That's where you win. So. All right, so let's get into the nitty gritty of this. So we get this. Here's the deal. This is the first part of it is we got to understand mindset, right? Mindset is what sets you apart. Winners have a winning mindset. Right now we're going through a rough time and you know, anybody can win if you're. If you're up by 30 points with two minutes left, you know, but the real winners are down by 20 points with two minutes left and they're still grinding. Right. That's when I fell in love with the Patriots and everything. Like, I love them, everybody hates them because of bandwagon, all that stuff. But after the Atlanta thing, it shows that winners know how to win even when it's hard. So now we're hard. So now let's get into the nitty gritty. Tell us about the note business. You know, give us a little bit of, you know, what our appetite for, what people should start thinking about, especially for those that, you know, I just have to believe there's a lot of people on this call that probably have no idea what, what this is, what you do and give us a couple steps and then also some next steps for how they can learn from you and what you can teach us.

Yeah, glad to. So everybody's in the note game. You're just on the wrong side of the payment stream. Most of the time we're paying out versus paying in. And so when I buy notes, I'm not buying the property. Yes, the property is a security for the IOU for the note, but we're buying that debt, we're buying that loan. And when I buy, whether it's a performing loan where somebody's been paying on time, or a non performing loan where somebody hasn't paid in 60 days, six months or sometimes six years, depending on where they're located at, we're buying the mortgage and then becoming the bank. And how we make our money by becoming the bank is the best way is actually to get the borrower to start paying on time most of the time. And so once we buy this distressed debt and if it's a non performing note, we are buying it at a discount, a big discount, usually 50, 60 cents on the dollar of as is value is the highest that we will go. I don't usually go above 60, 65% of as is value. Now usually they're upside down, usually owe a lot more on the property than when it's worth in some sort of fashion. But we still buy discounts because we're taking on an issue from the bank, you know, and the bank is willing to sell us the debt at a discount because it gets off their books, they can run with it and go from there versus them doing the foreclosure process and having to drag it all out. So smaller banks, you won't buy non performing notes from a small one off bank because they just can't afford it. We buy a lot from regional banks, mid sized banks, sometimes the bigger guys, but mostly mid sized. But we're buying that debt, becoming the bank. We then immediately reach out to the borrowers of some sort. Trying to see. Hey, what happened? Tell us your country western song. Grandma get run over by a reindeer. Did your dog get hit by the truck your wife leave you for Bubba? What's the issue that you're not paying? Do you want to pay? Do you want to stay? I mean if, you know, pay, you know, stay. We got to figure something out. I don't run a charity. I don't like a charity. Can't pay. Okay, do you have somebody can come in and take over the payment or can we modify the loan? Nope. Well, how about we sell it on a short sale or how about you just pay if you've got cash, pay us off, we'll do a settlement for you. A lot of times if that doesn't work, hey, we'll give you cash for your key so that you can walk and forgive the debt. You know, if that doesn't work and you're just gonna tell us to pound sand or give us the middle finger, then we go the legal route. Hire the foreclosure attorneys and we go the legal process to foreclose and then we take the property back after evicting. And then we can sell the property as an reo. We can keep it in our portfolio, we can sell it to foreclosure auction if we want to, or turn into whatever we want to. So there's a variety of exit strategies. I wish I knew which strategy. Every deal we bought was going to go down. Some we thought was going to modify immediately, turn into foreclosures and vice versa. Some that we foreclosed, that we bought, we thought we foreclosed, turned into modifications. And that's great. But our biggest way of making money is to get them re performing. We buy it at a discount, get it reperforming for a period of like 12 months. And then after 12 months it's considered a reperforming note that we can sell back to Wall street back on the secondary market. So if we bought a note, let's just give you some numbers. Say it's a 6% note on $100,000 house, they owe 100 grand, 105, they're a couple months late. Say we buy it at 50 grand. Well, if they get them to repay, they start paying on time. That's like a 12% cash and cash return immediately. Since their interest rate's at 6, it's like a double return. If we get them to bring three or four months to the table, that will boost the ROI up several other big points. Then after we get them on time, they pay on time for 12 months cash flow, we sell it off at 80, 85, sometimes 90 cents on the dollar of value to the secondary market. So it's another 30 to 40% of profit on the back end side. Or we just keep it for cash flow, depending on what the return on investment is. So that's the kind of note investing in a nutshell.

Are you just looking at the numbers or do you look in localities? Do you prefer areas where, you know yes and no.

So, you know, I'm in Austin, Texas. I wish I could buy a lot of stuff in Austin, Texas, but we do everything fast here. Fast highways, fast foreclosures and fast executions, you know? Yes, there's areas of the country that I like. I mean, we get spreadsheets from these banks and institutions that may have stuff in 30 states, other states that are really expensive, like California, I mean, it's overpriced still to this day. You know, the land of fruits and nuts with all the droughts is just a bunch of nuts out there. So it's overpriced even for non performing stuff. So I buy a lot of stuff right now and in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, excluding Cook county or Chicago because that's a very difficult place to foreclose. God's waiting room. Florida is one of my favorite spots. Carolinas, like I said, every note has a different structure. You know, you need to know what the foreclosure time frames in each set state, how far behind are they are, what's the property value look like. I don't usually buy in rural areas because there's just less demand, less resources, less realtors, less buyers and try to buy usually in cities that are, you know, towns of $50,000 if not 50,000 population or greater or there's a university there to help off. We'd have to take the property back. You obviously want to look at the condition of property by driving by. We're not going to get inside views of the property because somebody's usually living in it. But we feel a lot about a property by the exterior. And then also seeing we get an inside look at the assets, loan docs, seeing what the borrower did, being able to pull servicing notes from the current borrower, servicing companies, calling the borrower he's a borrower, like hey, we're trying to do a loan mod. We're trying to do a short sale that will work with, you know, if they tell them to, you know, they're combating on the phone. We're like, well the borrower's not going to change. It's probably go the route that we've got to foreclose on this one or start a foreclosure process. So it's a different mindset than just buying a property, fixing up and flipping it. It's a whole banker's mindset. You say, which way can this go? Mortgage bankers do really well in this or mortgage brokers do well in this industry. Real estate engineers don't do so well because it can go a whole variety of different ways a lot of times. So that makes sense.

So real quick, so you got $100,000 loan, 6% interest, you buy it because it's not performing for 50 grand. You get them to perform, let's say, let's say they, they come back to the table, get them performing. One of my buddies had a debt collection business and that he sold for an insane amount of money. You know, it's probably similar, similar piece here.

Very similar. Yep.

That you sell it back. What would you Sell it back to Wall street for like, what? What is it? Like, just a gut reaction.

85, 80. 85 grand? Because usually it's 85 to 90%. Because most of these Wall street funds are getting money really cheap. Like, not right now. Wall street can get money at 0%, right?

0%.

So if they're buying a note at 3% where the borrower is paying them 3%, it's not a 3% profit. It's a 300% profit, or really an infinite profit because it's 0%. But they're borrowing at 1% and borrower is paying at 6%. That's a 500% return. That's how banks get so big. It's the arbitrage aspect of things. You know, they'll let you. They'll give you a half percent on your savings account and then lend it out at 18% on a credit card. That's a 3,600% market in profit. And so that's the thing is 85, 90% of the dollar, you got to look at what the payments are. If somebody's looking for a 12% yield, then you just deduct it, you know, figuring out what the 12 months of payments are coming in and divide that by 12% to figure out your sales price. But yeah, it's buying at 50. Get them re performing, servicing it, getting the borrowers to pay on time, maybe paying a little bit extra in the front end, some skin in the game so they're committed this time. The fact that you bought it at 50 cents on a dollar gives you a lot of flexibility as the bank to go back to that homeowner where maybe the original bank was very stringent in what they could and would not do. Like, hey, what can you pay? I know your payment's $800 a month. Can you pay that? Nope. Can you pay 500? You can? Okay, great. Can you bring an extra hundred dollars to the table? I don't care if you got to go sell sperm or blood or something, but for every dollar you bring to the table, we'll forgive maybe double that. You know, we get a lot of ways to be creative for their borrowers. You know, like, we got a lady that just paid off this month. I bought her note six years ago. She owed 65 grand. Her house was worth 35 in South Below Illinois. She lived in the house for 18 years. I did a refinance, pulled some equity out to pay some bills. Raised her three kids in there for 18 years. Husband got sick, had a heart attack. When we got the loan package. Her loan was one of like 30 loans. We were buying a portfolio, and when I got the. I was like, okay, let's look at it. We looked at it and literally her file was like a stack of this one. Because she'd been trying to do a loan mod for four years, but her loan had been sold four times. So she'd sent in modification agreements, bank statements, W2s just trying to get it. And I'm like, oh, okay, you know, she owes some money there. Let's work this out. So I call her on the phone and I said, hey, I said, I see you trying to loan Mod. Your payment's 450amonth. I know you're behind quite a bit. Can you start making your existing payment? She's like, yes, I can do that. I just can't come up with the 20 grand or the 15 grand they want. Okay, can you bring 5 grand to the table? She's like, no, I can't bring five grand, but I can bring 2,500 to the table. I said, okay, bring 2,500 to the table. When you meet my attorney, you make your existing payment. Could you pay an extra $200 a month? She's like, yeah, I could do that. Like, great. Tell you what, if you do this for 12 months, I'll drop your interest rate to 0% so that every dollar you pay goes towards principal. At the end of 12 months, will reappraise your property and drop the balance from 60 down to the value of the property so you're not over encumbered at that point. And now that you're making these extra payments, instead of being paid off in 28 years, you'll be paid off in 72 months. Six years. I didn't show up at the closing table. I do know that when he, she and her husband William showed up to my attorney to sign the docs and it was a $2500. He cried at the table to sign the documents. And it's such a good feeling helping people to stay in their house. But it was kind of another surprise. Like six months later, I get a card in the mail. Her eldest daughter had a baby and they named it Carson after me because I helped them do that. So it's kind of a weird story, but a great way. Serious. That's.

I mean, that's really awesome though, right? Because a lot of, you know, when you look on the outside, you know, from the outside looking in on this industry, sometimes it can have a bad rep sometimes, right? Same Thing with wholesalers and a lot of other people. But you're legitimately helping people in dire situations, right?

And I made money on the deal. I mean, houses were 35, she owed 60. I paid 12 grand for a note. She brought five grand to the table and she made $600, $650 payment for 12 months that first year. I had basically 100% returned my money at the end of 12 months. The other five years where she paid $600 a month was basically pure profits going forward. And so it was a win win. I forgave her 25 grand. You know, I could have taxed her on that or she would try to do that. She never would have caught up on that. So that's the thing is you can be, if a borrower wants to work with you, you can be flexible. You can really do some really great good. That's why we joke about making America great again. One distress borrower at a time. They just, you just need options. And a lot of times banks aren't going to tell the borrowers they're fully options. You've got employees that are making 17 bucks an hour. Don't give a rat's ass about the person on the other side. And that's why I tell my staff, like, listen, if you get a borrower on the phone and they want to come to some sort of agreement right then and there and the numbers make sense, let's just get it done, get it done. Make it a win win. Not try to squeeze every dollar out of a deal because it'll come back to you tenfold in good or bad.

So we need to wrap up here. But let me ask one final question before, before we tell everybody how to get in touch with you so they can learn more about this. So we work within our real estate company here in the D.C. area. We work with a lot of people that are going to foreclosure, a lot of people that are behind us. That's been a piece of our business, big piece of our business for a long time. Are you able to, you know, I'm just curious, for my own personal business, are you able to find an individual note and do that? Or is that like almost impossible?

So it's really just difficult because a lot of these mortgages are into different tranches. And I'm not saying I haven't been able to do that. It's easier to do on the commercial side than it is on the residential side. We never target a specific property. When we find a vacant property, we don't go to the bank and try to track that down because usually it's already an reo and once it's an REO we can't do anything with it.

What if you got somebody? So we get people that the bank has sent a letter to intend to foreclose or they're like behind or something like that.

Is that still too far? It all depends on who the, it all depends on who the bank is. If it's Chase, bank of America, Citibank, you know, One West. No, those guys, they don't know. I couldn't even, even their internal departments don't know who to talk to to buy their stuff. And you get a write like a $50 million check to buy stuff and it's still not that great a deal. So that's why we go direct to the banks to get lists sent to us because then they're going to sell us their problem children. And now we have used a foreclosure of pending foreclosure like that. There's a warm lead a lot of times in the banks to get lists, but very rarely can we stop like a one off deal like that. It's not saying it can't be done, it's just it all depends on who the lender is and where that asset is in the foreclosure process. A lot of times if it's on that point where it's about to go to sale in the next week or two. The banks already had their fill of trying to help that borrower out. They've already sent so many different options out, they're just, if they're 99% committed, they're going all the way most of the time.

Cool. Well, why don't you tell us how people can get in touch with you and how they can learn more about what you're talking about here.

Yeah, no problem man. So we've got the mothership, I guess you could say where everybody can go to is weclosenotes.com that's the main website. We have the podcast Note Closer Show. We're syndicated across the country and we have, we do a variety of education bringing on vendors, investors and other people on the mindset and business aspect with our podcast. But I'd love to offer, I mean your listeners out there. We've got a free 73 page book they can download. It's kind of a great, great starting point. They go to noteblueprint.com freebook noteblueprint.com Freebook they can download it, you can buy it on Amazon, but you might as well get it for free from me.

Yeah, we can include that in our show notes.

Perfect. That's it. Go to weclosenotes.com I'm really the only Scott Carson out there, except for the English goalkeeper named Scott Carson as well. So I'm not that guy. All right.

Well, man, this has been awesome. I'll tell you what, I've learned a lot personally, and I'm sure that everybody on the show, just especially in a niche like this. And so, yeah, if you're looking for something, Scott is a stud and you gotta. You gotta go learn from Scott, so it'd be great. But yeah, that's. That's all I got. Jeff, you got anything else to finish up?

Awesome, man. Not at all. Scott sounds. It sounds like some exciting business. You know, you've come from the bottom in some regards and you worked your butt off and got back to where you are now. You know, just keep going, man. It's awesome, exciting stuff. So a lot of people out here, you know, we have no idea what Korona is going to do to us, but keep your head up, keep grinding, keep fighting, do that next thing and a little bit more. And until next time, hey, I hope you enjoyed another episode here of Uncommon Real Estate, and we'll be with you again shortly.

Hey, guys, make sure you go out there. If you love it, what they're doing, go on, hit the subscribe button. Leave these guys a five star review. We love it as podcasters. We get reviews. They didn't pay me, but they probably should for that. But go out, leave the review and leave a five star. Trust me, these guys are busting butt and we'd love it as podcasters. Thanks for listening.

Awesome. Absolutely. Take care.

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Uncommon Real Estate. Subscribe to the podcast to stay up to date with the latest mastermind conversations from Chris, Jeff and other Uncommon real estate industry leaders. If you love this podcast, please write us a review. And to fast track your real estate career, go to Chris Craddock.com.

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