I just got back from Note Expo 2018 and am pretty exhausted after a very busy couple of days. There were 400+ note investors and vendors, and I feel like I talked to the majority of them before it was all over. While there was a lot of great content in the presentations, my main focus was on meeting people. On day one I only spent about 45 minutes in the sessions, and another hour on day 2. I was able to get to the Singer Law event on Thursday night, and to the Sottile and Barile event from Friday night. I also met Eddie and Martha Speed for the first time which was pretty cool. Basically I was talking to people from first thing in the morning until late at night for two straight days. If you were there and I missed you, hopefully we can catch up at the next event.
I walked away with a lot of great contacts and information. Here are some of the things I learned that stood out the most:
- You want to be a deal architect.
- I didn’t catch many presentations, but I really enjoyed Eddie Speed’s talk on being a deal architect. Too often, investors hit a roadblock in a deal and then give up on it. There can be 50+ parameters in a deal, and if you focus on defining the terms you can give counter-parties what they are most focused on and walk away with a great deal.
- Sometimes recording a land contract can prevent you from having a register it as a rental.
- I’ve run into issues with this in a few cities and so far have been able to get exceptions.
- If you buy a note where the foreclosure process has already started, you can save yourself delays and potential problems by keeping the same attorney who started the process.
- There are some cool portfolio management software programs out there.
- As my note portfolio grows I’ve been thinking a lot about what I need to do to be able to scale. I’m probably not going to use the programs I saw at the Expo, but I came away with a lot of thoughts on how I can configure Pipedrive to make it easier for me to keep things organized.
- As expected, note sellers are getting more active as we get deeper into the 4th quarter.
- I was able to connect with some new sellers and look forward to going through some tapes this week.
While I learned a lot, the best part was spending time and hanging out with fellow note investors. If you didn’t make it to Note Expo this year, hopefully I’ll see you there next time.