Minggu, 24 Mei 2009

Buy Notes - Know Who Your Borrower Is

By Dean Engle

Buy Notes - Who is Your Borrower?

A friend of mine who is a note broker, set up a call for me with the Senior Vice President of a CA bank. He was in charge of the banks note sales.

The Sr Vice President advised me that they had 3 non performing notes that were commercial loans in the LA area.

Communication with Your Borrower, a Lesson on Buying Notes

Stay with me here...

So the SVP told me that one of the loans has a foreclosure sale scheduled 2 weeks from now.

The bank had not been in contact with the builder/developer (borrower).

I asked her if she was worried about possible problems when taking over the properties through foreclosure. And if she had any other concerns regarding the loans.

She let me know that the bank didn't have too many concerns because the property values were enough to pay off their debt.

Buy Notes - My Concerns

The most important thing that I have learned is that building the relationship with your borrower is key. This is probably one of the most important concepts in the note buying business. Manage your relationships.

You can ruin your chances of getting out of a note deal if you do not work with your borrower.

This is why...

For all loans, there are 5 Note Buying Exit Strategies:

refinance, short sales or deed-in-lieu, reperformance, note sale, and foreclosure.

Out of these options, the only 2 that will succeed with no borrower contact are foreclosure and note sale.

But the risk that the foreclosure runs - and foreclosure is the path that the banker is taking in this example - is that the borrower may file for bankruptcy and postpone the time when you recover the property.

Buying Notes - My Advice

Buying notes can bring you high returns without have to foreclose or to sell the note to someone else.

So if you lose contact with your borrower, you are essentially killing about 60% of your note buying exits. (3 of the 5)

Would a professional golfer get onto a course with only 5 of 12 clubs?

Wouldn't that limit their game?

I'm pretty sure of it.

It would be a funny sight watching him hit a putt with a 9-iron.

Working with your borrower is essential when you are buying notes. It can be painful, but it is what has to be done.

This is the advice that I gave to the SVP at the LA bank today.

I will be tracking her non performing notes so see if any of them end up in bankruptcy. Then we will know if she took my advice.

And if the notes do end up in BK, I am pretty sure that she will be regretting the fact that she lost communication with her borrowers.

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