How To Find Notes

Finding notes takes an investment of your time and/or your money. If you have money but don't have a lot of time, you can simply place advertisements in lots of newspapers and do quite well over the long term. If you have more time than money and are willing to work hard, you can still be successful. Remember to have business cards made up. This is VERY important. There are over 100 ways to find notes. Here are some of the better methods:
Newspapers: An easy way to find notes is to place your own ads in the classified section of as many newspapers as you can. Here's one that works well:
*** CASH *** QUICK ***For your owner financed note. Most any structured cash flow purchased. No fees. Call (your phone number)
It's inexpensive and it makes the phone ring. The drawback is that you'll have to explain to many callers that they can't sell the mortgage they're PAYING on, but that might be preferable to spending the extra money on a larger ad to explain it (a lot of them would call anyway). Or, you might try an ad such as:
If you sold your property and are RECEIVING payments on a note, I will buy that note for CASH! Call --
Put your ads where people will see them. If you have the funds, try display ads in the sports or comics section. If you can't afford that, use the big papers sparingly (Sundays only) and concentrate on the small-to-medium sized newspapers. Try out-of-town papers, too, especially if you live in a place where you see lots of competition from other note buyers.
Don't forget the "shoppers," those free all-classified ad papers (the Thrifty Nickel, Penny Saver, etc.). Ads in shoppers are cheap and can be effective, but you have to run them for months to get results.
The secret to finding notes is PATIENCE. The more papers you advertise in day after day, the more calls you'll get. Keep running your ads, week after week. Rural, small and medium-sized papers can be ideal - they're cheap and you have no competition. A good criteria is this: If you've located no notes after two months in a larger daily paper, 6 months in a small town daily or 1 year in a weekly, drop the ad for 6 months and then try again. If you just hit those averages, you are doing just fine.
Look around your area for homes for sale. This is a proven method we use daily with long termresults. Your helping the home owner sell their home quickly and creating a note for you to broker.
What will you say when people call? Make a Note Worksheet ask the questions on it.
Networking: If you're going to be an active note finder you have to let people know about you. It's a long process before you get results, and the principle of "out of sight, out of mind" applies. You have to keep reminding people that you're out there waiting for notes. Obviously, you should concentrate your efforts on people who are in a position to bring notes your way, primarily real estate agents and brokers, title company employees, bank trust officers and bank loan officers, and attorneys with a real estate practice.
Look for advertisements placed by real estate agencies promoting their top producers. These are the leaders in the local real estate community. Call them and tell them you're looking for "owner financed" notes and ask them to call you with any they know about, either now or in the future. You can even offer them a modest referral commission, say $100 for every note they bring you that is purchased (when you're making $500 or more for one phone call to the note owner and a fax to us, paying the agent $100 is smart!). Note that in some cases real estate agents are prohibited from receiving such commissions, but that is their decision, not yours.
Follow-up with a brief letter and enclose your card - or, better yet, your own rolodex card! You could have some color rolodex cards printed with "CASH FOR NOTES" on the tab, and your name, phone number and other information on the card, and hand them out to real estate agents and others. Keep in touch with these folks with a letter every couple of months and it will begin to pay off.
Make a habit of dropping in on every open house you see, look around a little bit, and then get the conversation with the agent around to your real purpose: let him or her know you buy notes. Be sure to leave them with your card (or rolodex card) that indicates you buy notes -- in fact, give them several to pass around their office. Follow up your open house visits with a phone call or personal letter to the agents, thanking them for their time and reminding them you buy notes. Ask them to tell other agents about you, and send more cards they can pass around the office and post on the bulletin board.
Networking shouldn't be restricted to real estate agents. Attorneys, accountants, title company officials and bankers often have notes crossing their desk. Use the personal contacts you already have with these people to let them know you are interested in notes. A tasteful letter indicating the same, mailed to names you find in legal directories at the library or simply culled from the phone book, may produce results. Your letter must be low-key and professional if you expect results.
The Bulletin Board Method: You can always put up little signs on community bulletin boards advertising that you buy notes. Remember that the stores, community centers and other establishments that permit notices remove them on a regular basis (such as every two weeks). It becomes almost a full-time job just to keep your notices up. If you're going to do this, you're eventually going to have to hire someone like a high school student to do the legwork.
This technique has one great advantage: you can do it yourself for free. Therefore, it's a way you can get started this afternoon with no up-front investment. Be sure you handwrite your ad, and use the same wording advised for your newspaper ads. Handwritten ads are much less threatening than printed ones; simply write it out with a black felt-tip pen and have it reproduced on index cards at a quick print shop. Put up your cards with a stapler, which is much faster and less expensive than thumbtacks. Print "cash for mortgages" and your phone number on tabs they can tear off.
Again, this is a method that requires patience. You have to keep putting your notices back up and keep working at the program. This is really a supplement to your other efforts and should not be your only method. The downside to the bulletin board method is that the response will be so poor that you could be discouraged from notes altogether, which would be a disaster. If you try this, convince yourself not to expect any response at all. Then you might be pleasantly surprised. There are alot of ways to market for Notes this is a great book www.lulu.com/content/679259 I have used these methods for puchasing notes and they work alot better than I had hoped.