The Note Closers Show With Scott Carson From Rental Real Estate Investing Podcast With Jonathan Taylor Smith and Landlord

Okay, 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.

Husband, father, entrepreneur, Realtor, a long list of other titles and descriptions and Landlord welcome to the and Landlord Podcast with me, Jonathan Taylor Smith, also known as jt Following a roadmap to financial freedom through residential rental real estate. Welcome to the and Landlord Podcast Podcast Podcast Podcast and and and and lord and Lord Po.

Welcome to episode number 47 with the note Closer show podcast host, Scott Carson. So I won't delay this just a little background. I first met 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 number 20. Keep listening and you'll learn why. I'll certainly give Note Investing a try.

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 Closer 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 guest, 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 Investors Business Daily, the Wall Street Journal Inc.com he calls his home, Austin, Texas. So join me in welcoming to the show Scott the Note Guy Carson.

Hey, Jonathan, I'm so honored to be on here, man. Excited to have some fun with you today and deliver some nuggets to your amazing audience. Honored to be here.

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?

So that's a great, great question. I'm a big sports fan. You know, I played college football for a couple years in college and so, you know, I love attending football, baseball sport events. I like going to concerts. But we also do a lot of stuff here locally in Austin. You know, Austin's a beautiful city, you know, the live music capital of the world. So we love going out to different venues here, great food and also enjoy kind of the artsy side of things, you know, theater plays. We just like to have a lot of fun. And so I think that's one of the biggest things is when my father left, 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 enjoy it, you're doing something wrong. And so we try to do something fun every week if we can or try to experience life because life is a buffet and it's a, it's an amazing ride if you can enjoy it and dine from that table.

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. 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 you know, 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 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 money.

No, 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 distressed 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, it's either falling on hard times or somebody who's just not making their mortgage payments. And that can happen for a variety of reasons. They've been laid off, the market has crashed, which we obviously saw over a decade ago. They've gotten sick. Loss of a loved one, gone through divorce. You know, there's a variety of things that people won't make mortgage payment. But we find that most people want to pay their mortgage on time. They want that dream of homeownership. 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 100. Okay. They may be 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 that well below what other people are paying in the traditional retail market. So that's the thing that I like is that a, we buy the debt at a substantial discount from the banks or the hedge funds out there. We become the bank where I'm only buying first liens. And so that way we can negotiate. And since we bought the noted discount, we can reach back out to Mr. And Mrs. Borrower and say, listen, hey, I know you've gone through some hard times. You know, let's get you back on track. You know, I 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 their mortgage back on time or reinstated or doing loan mods that the returns, I don't have to go out and deal with toilets, tenants and trash outs because they 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 $120,000. Not we basically paid 33 cents on the dollar. Well, Mr. Borrower starts paying on time again. You know, we've got the flexibility with like, listen, I know you're six months behind. Let's take that six months. And I did the face mount of the loan or hey, let's drop your balance to 100 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 reperforming note that I could sell at 80, 85, 90% of value and that's a pretty good profit margin in 12 months plus the cash flow along the way. Or I just hold on to the note. So going back to that same numbers, $120,000 mortgage, they might have a principal and interest payment of say $600 a month. Well, 600 times 12 is 7200. If I paid 40 grand for that note, 7200 on top of 40,000 is 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, they haven't 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 without having to do all the heavy lifting. Then we're not paying for taxes, they're not paying for upkeep. We've got some legal fees and some servicing costs. But I'm only buying first liens. I like to buy owner occupied properties because then it's usually not too damaged. 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 of 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 its 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 owned on that property?

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 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. You know, I used to be a banker for JPMorgan Chase. I didn't even know about this aspect of go till I got into the real estate side of investing. So 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 there's over 1600 different banks across the country that have at least five branches or more. And then that doesn't include in all the mortgage companies that are originating loans right now that have to take some stuff back or other things. So the internal departments go by specific names, you know, special asset managers, secondary marketing managers, or whole loan sales departments. These are the guys and the girls or the ladies and gentlemen, we should say inside the departments that actually have a couple 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? Because a non performing note is a, is not a good thing for a bank. It costs them about 10 times the balance of what they lent out on and fees that they can't generate or arbitrage out dramatically. So it affects your bottom line. So that's why if you start being seven days late on a mortgage payment, the phone starts ringing off the hook. You start having certified letters show up. Because when it gets to 31 days or beyond, one month in default, the value of that mortgage starts dropping 5 to 10% each month you're in default. So it's a matter of. We do a lot of drip marketing and my drip marketing, I mean email blast out to asset managers, you know, on a regular basis we leverage LinkedIn to find people at different.

They've identified themselves as an asset manager or something related to the industry on their LinkedIn profile.

Yeah, exactly. You do a search for like special asset manager, you may find like somewhere 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 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 gentlemen sent me back, said, hey, I've got a list of some performing notes that I'm willing to sell the discount to. I'm all excited about the discount, performing up that I can pick up a yield at 12 to 15% without having to do a lot of work.

So when you're out working with the asset managers, is it just general properties or can you target specific properties with them?

So that's the thing. The more specific you try to dig down, the harder it's going to be because these guys and gals are dealing with, you know, big portfolios. So I would say, hey, tell me what you've got and I'll take a look and cherry pick. If you go in and try to say, hey, I want a specific zip code or I just want in Durham, you know, North Carolina. North Carolina is a really popular market. So the more what I always say is get on the radar, get a list sent to you, build that relationship and then start, you know, I got a list in yesterday. 77 assets all across the country. Single family first lien homes. And then I can narrow it down by doing my due diligence. Okay, square footage, you know, values, you know, if they're in a city or on the outskirts, how eliminate, you know, if it's mobile homes, I usually eliminate those because they usually need a lot of work, you know what I mean? And I like bread and butter assets. Three bedroom, two baths, at least a thousand square foot in a city that's gonna have at least 50,000 people or more. Because that 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 can actually buy the property from me in a timely fashion.

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 on.

Yeah, I mean, Austin, Texas is a great market. We've got. We didn't see a big downturn in the economy over a decade ago. I mean, property's going through the roof here. I haven't bought anything in Austin. In my own market here in Texas alone, I take it back. I bought a couple. I bought like four notes in Dallas and Houston and a couple other places in the last 10 years. For the most part, 99% of the deals that I bought have been Outside of my home state. And that's the thing with a beautiful thing called the Internet these days. You've heard about that, right?

I've heard of this thing, this machine.

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 and then dealing with the property if they don't pay, or helping you with the foreclosure and things like that. And that's the, that's the beautiful thing. I've got a servicing company out of Reno, Nevada that handles the collections and, you know, mailing out to the borrowers. If a borrower doesn't respond, then we've got attorneys that will expedite that aspect of reaching out and sending legal documents. And then if we take the property back or foreclose, then of course we just reach out to local realtors and a couple teams there that handle us with the. Either the fixing, you know, the clean out, 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, I might get a list in of 77, make 20 offers in the first 24 hours. I don't have to put eyes immediately on the property. Yeah, I jump online and do a little bit of due diligence online street view and exactly, you know, pulling rent numbers, looking at the payment history, 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.

You also want to know what the likelihood is that you can bring them back to a paying status.

Exactly, exactly. Because we get the loan file. So we get copies of the loan file. We can see the call logs, we can see the discussions back and forth with the servicing company. We can see the, you know, the whole loan application. If a borrower is trying to do a loan mod or sending 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 status is. You know, we look at where, you know, are they working. Can we tell that online? I had one borrower who posted on Facebook when we were looking like, am I gonna make my mortgage payment or go to Disney this month? I guess I'm gonna go to Disney. You know, that's Probably a good sign they're not gonna re perform, you know what I mean? But we always do put eyes on a property and that would either be realtors by pulling local comps. I mean you're not going to get into the properties most of the time unless the borrower is trying to do a short sale or trying to sell the house out. But you know, we do drive bys, we take a look at condition the property, you know, what's a long look like, you know, what's the car look like, what are the notes in the file. And then we go from there. And the more, I mean here's the thing. If you buy occupied assets, which is what we just focused on, there's more likelihood and you actually have more exit strategies to get that loan performing. If it's a vacant property, you're not going to get reperforming. It's going to become either a foreclosure, a cash for keys and then go that, you know that road of taking the asset back if possible. You're not going to get it re performing most of the time. In my over 12 years of doing this, I've only had two people move back into their houses and start reperforming. When you look at the list, exactly when we were looking at first. Yeah.

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?

So there's a lot of reasons why it depends on where they're at in the foreclosure timeline. If they're basically up to the point where they're foreclosing next month, they're very unlikely to do a short sale and they're very unlikely to sell the note to me because they 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 department is inside a 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. Okay. Exactly. They don't. And we have on the short sale side, you 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 borrower. 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 even they sell it at 50 cents of 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 time frames. Like here in Texas. The reason I bought a lot of notes in Texas is because we foreclose so fast here, 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 sorry, sorry. Less affordable. Because the banks know that they can sell it and 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 reos. So it depends on where the lender's at the foreclosure timeframe and what that market is doing.

So in my scenario when I'm buying properties, I'm typically funding them with 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?

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 because they're in the note game of origination but they want to own the property. Now I will see some hard money lenders lend on properties where the borrower signed a deed in lieu and taking it back because 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. You know, self directed IRAs are a 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 when we start getting up to some of the larger balance loans like on the commercial side, sometimes even the banks will finance the purchase on a note on a million plus balance loan to keep it on their books, take it off from the non performing side to the performing side. But most of the time you're gonna need cash and OPM to take these things down.

And so when they're lending, are they securitized by the first position note that you're acquiring or is it some other scenario that 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 Asset Fund or Scott Carson llc. So that's filed in the public records. I'm now the lender. The mortgage stays the same, the deed 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 investors, we're doing a couple 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 show say 50% interest to their LLC or IRA and 50% interest to our entity.

Okay, that makes sense.

So.

I'm curious about what my experience would be if I tried to do note investing or distressed mortgage assets 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 2am about the toilet being clogged or anything like that. My life is blissful and I don't have tenant troubles.

But.

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 own time that.

You have to invest in it. Yeah. So here it all comes down to how big of a control freak anybody is. And I think a lot of real estate entrepreneurs, we're all control freaks, we want to touch it or dive into it. You know, if people 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 performing notes and then non performing notes. If you're looking more passive where you don't have to do a lot of work. I'm A big believer. Performing notes work well for you. You can still get a great, you know, 8 to 15% return on investment by buying in a performing note. You know, there's people like me that buy non performing, get it re performing and we sell it off to people that want to get a deal. Then you're basically dealing just with cash flow each month. You're not dealing with vacancy, you're not dealing with property management, taking a cut out of it. So if you're a really active landlord where you're having a lot of stuff, nobody ever called bank of America to unclog a toilet at 2:00 in the morning. Morning. You know what I mean? So that's the way to look at it. That way. We have a lot of people that like to get in the non performing side because they want to increase their rental holdings. They use it as a way to find deals that they can buy at a big discount. Because that's the thing that we're seeing is still a substantial discount below what most people are buying on retail side.

That's my thought process as well. The another source of distressed properties.

Yeah, and here's the thing too. Most the time, most real estate investors are sending out postcards or flyers or bandit signs or doing a right thing to get one deal from one borrower. We like. I like the note business because 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'll be 100 notes this quarter or 50 notes this quarter. 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, this month. And if it makes sense, great. If it doesn't, then we just move on and wait for the next list.

And 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 there's a service called Lane guide, like in your lane, that's like $165 a year that kind of tracks what banks have bought, 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 stalk to see who's showing up to that 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, you know, those licensed mortgage bankers because 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 had to take back that they couldn't sell off to Fannie Mae or Freddie because of something, some issue or something like that. And those can often be really great discounts as well too.

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 ten day update period. People that don't even go to the auction can upbid 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.

Yeah, I don't do it in North Carolina just for that reason, you know. Now Texas, we, 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 this, we're using a tax lien in our favor to help expedite the foreclosure, to wipe out liens or to clean up the title.

Okay, so it's a strategy of acquisition process.

Yeah, exactly. Although today I just got a check in for 20 grand from a, from Duval County, Jacksonville, Florida on a note that we paid four grand for a year and a half ago. It needed some work, but 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 tax overages. There's a lot of that happening out there. Tax liens are great in different areas. But I would tell people like, you know, I like to stay in my lane. We find enough deals in our lane and go from there.

And you're doing this business with the aid of the team. You've built and virtual assistants or.

Yeah, I mean that's the thing is there's, there's teams all across. I've got, you know, we've been doing this a little bit longer than 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. Our attorneys are remote. Like I said, my servicing company's in Reno, Nevada. I have another one in Southern California that we work with. You know, they're sending spreadsheets to me where we jump on the phone. My attorneys are across the country in the states that they're licensed to 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 loan lots. You know, that's the beautiful thing is with these vendors you can set parameters of what you want to do. Like we bought a portfolio, 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 on that, great. You can approve the loan modification of the trial payment plan. If they won't fall through this, then we want to expedite these to the legal side, go from there. So it's, there's a lot of great ways to set systems up where you basically check in your email and checking spreadsheets and communicating back and forth that way without having to do a lot of borrower outreach yourself.

So correct me if I'm wrong. You teach this business as well, correct?

Yeah, I've been teaching it. I had, back when I started doing this in 2008, I had so many deals and I obviously as brand new going through, I had got, went through the downturn, got my knees kicked in on a couple bad deals that went south. And so I was like, well I'm just like everybody else is going through the downturn here, so started reaching out to the banks and had so many deals coming to me and people like, how are you doing these deals? You know, I just started teaching. People ask me, 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. I still think there's plenty of inventory out there. And so yeah, we've been teaching workshops on how to buy notes. We used to call it Note buying for Dummies, but we changed it up to our virtual Note buying workshop because we do, you know, three to four big three day workshops online throughout the year teaching people how to find fun and flip. And then we're also for people that are curious, a little bit more curious about it, wanting to dip their toe in in the water before diving in. We've got a couple things that we call Note weekend where it's a one day all day, basically nine to six with just me teaching kind of the 101 note investing 101 in the basics of what note investing is and then.

Go from there in Austin or online.

It's an online. I do everything online these days.

Okay, well I want a link to that. I'll put it in the show notes for anyone who's interested in finding out more about it. 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?

So there's a lot of videos online, which is probably the better place to start. There's a couple older ones by, you know, if you look cash flow or not investing, there's a few that have been running A few years ago. I've got a book actually I put together. It's a 73 page book that'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 go to noblueprint.com real estate free book and you can download the 73 page book. And it's basically me just talking about what note investing is, the basics of it. Great place to learn. You know, we've got the podcast obviously that we've spent a big chunk of time going through specific niches and specific nuggets on each episode and interviewing vendors and other investors on the business. So that's probably the best place for people to go for the most part. But I mean, Google is a beautiful thing. YouTube's a beautiful thing. I'm not the only person teaching this anymore. 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 used note investing as a way to either leave their job that they disliked or add money to their bottom line on a monthly or annual basis or go out and change the world. That they're living in because they've done a great job in closing on deals. So reap out of that.

Well, I like my teachers 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 know, you had. It's like anything else, you have ups and downs of deals. Some deals we think we're going to get modified and then suddenly the bar goes quiet on us and then we have to foreclose. The biggest thing. This is not a get rich quick scheme at all. If anybody ever tells you that they're lying to you. This is a build wealth thing. And then part of the reason I love the note business is because the banks are in the note business. Everybody's 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.

You know there's a great way that's why the banks are the biggest institutions in the country besides Amazon. You know, that's something to think about there. But yeah, I've closed down over a thousand deals, bought over a half a billion dollars in debt, still have what, 325 loans on my portfolio that we're working through. Big chunk of those performing, others are non performing that we're working through to foreclose or work some sort of exit strategy with. So yeah, I eat and breathe this on a day in, day out basis.

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?

Yeah, it's really easy. Our website is weclosenotes.com you can go there, contact me there, check out our different schedules and things we've got going on. But it's easy. ScottClosenotes.com is the best email. Of course I'm on all social media channels as well there, but ScottClose notes.com is the best email to reach me and Glad to, you know, spend 20, 30 minutes, you know, talking with somebody and then let them pick my brain a little bit about the note business and it's right for them or if it's not, I'll tell them so. Okay.

And I do remember you saying that you'll probably be going to podfest. 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. So it's always good. And I appreciate you being free with your information and time. You've been very helpful and just directing on certain things. So I appreciate that.

Hey, anytime man. That's the beauty about going to conferences. And what I love about the podcasting industry is you got a lot of people that are friendly and pulling each other ways. I mean, 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 do such a great job. You've got a passion as well. And if you're listening to this guys on any podcast platform, do JT 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. I don't think there's enough people out there that are providing the type of content that he's doing and really the buck, you know, beneath the kimono kind of showing you what's working, what's not working and why he's so successful at what he does. So leave him a review and subscribe to the Ann Landlord podcast and 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, bud. Thanks.

Thank you for listening to the and Landlord podcast with me, Jonathan Taylor Smith by Blue Chariot Media Following a roadmap to financial freedom through residential rental real estate. You can find the podcast website and blog@andland.com the main company site is bluecharriot.com if you've received any value from this podcast, help me please make it available to to others and make sure you don't miss an episode by subscribing and posting your 5 star rating plus share it on social media. I welcome your comments on the blog and if you'd like to share your landlord horror story or have a comment or suggestion for the show, call 844-USA-BLUE and enter extension 263, which spells and on your keypad as in and landlord and leave a message. It may be used on a coming show. Thank you. Be all that you are and Landlord.

Nothing on the preceding show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for personalized advice. The comments and opinions of any guest are their own. Information is not guaranteed. Any investment may have potential for both profit and loss. The host is speaking solely on behalf of Blue Chariot Media, a division of Blue Chariot, llc.