Be The Bank

006 - Hand Smacks the Forehead

March 22, 2023 Justin Bogard Season 5 Episode 6
Be The Bank
006 - Hand Smacks the Forehead
Show Notes Transcript

Be The Bank S5 Ep6 - Hand Smacks the Forehead

On episode 6 of season 5, Justin Bogard talks with Marco Bario, of Porch Swing Funding, about Seller Financed notes!

Key Takeaways:

  1. Our companies have been confused by consumers
  2. Marco's past in Movie/TV production
  3. Loosing out on purchasing Seller Financed Notes

Resources and links discussed

About the Host

Justin Bogard – Note Investor specializing in performing Residential Real Estate Debt. He finds deals and acquires them for his own portfolio as well as educates investors while walking them through the process of owning a Real Estate Note!

Connect with the Host:

Narrator:

Interested in real estate. How about wealth? Well, they go hand in hand. And here you'll learn all about it, about it. Welcome to Be The Bank, a podcast where we discuss and debate the topics centered around real estate investing. Your host, Justin Bogart, shares insights into investing in real estate to create real wealth and passive income for you and your family. He'll share stories of real estate investments done right, walk you through the process of owning a real estate note, and most importantly, educate you. So you can be the bank. Bank. This is be the bank brought to you by American Note buyers. Now here's your host, Justin.

Justin Bogard:

Welcome back to another episode. This is number six of season five of the Be the Bank Podcast, brought to you by American Note Buyers. Today we're gonna be talking about some stories about seller financing when we buy seller finance paper, meaning, uh, we'll get into this. Our description is called Mom and Pop paper. Uh, have a guest on today that I'm gonna interview and talk to and, and chat with, uh, my friend Mr. Marco Barrio, and he'll be on in just a minute. And so he's also a, has been the television business as well. So he is got a kind of interesting background. So you guys will have to stay tuned and listen to it. Mr. Marco Barrio. How are you my friend?

Marco Bario:

Justin, how are you?

Justin Bogard:

<laugh>. Sorry, you're probably not Italian. It's probably your probably name has nothing to do with Italian. I just pictured it as Italian. Am I? I'm

Marco Bario:

Italian. I'm Italian.

Justin Bogard:

He's Italian. I win. I'm so good. I'm so glad it's not Richard Thornton on the other side and it's you. I need a break from Richard<laugh>. I'm just kidding. Richard's a good guy. I like to give him a hard time because quite frankly, he doesn't really give it back to me. So it's, it's just like a punching bag. So it it's a one-way street in this, uh, this experience.<laugh>. So I, I noticed that you're, um, those of you that are just listening to the podcast, we also stream this, uh, I'm sorry, we also record this on video and you can go to our American Note buyers YouTube channel as well to watch the video of this podcast. And Marco has his, uh, company name underneath his name, which is called Porch Swing Funding. Do you have a website, Marco?

Marco Bario:

I do Porch swing funding.com.

Justin Bogard:

That's easy. You gotta make it complicated, man.

Marco Bario:

No way.

Justin Bogard:

We're American op buyers and ours is a and b funds.com Doesn't make any sense, does it? My God.<laugh>

Narrator:

Funny,

Marco Bario:

Funny thing happened this week. Um, it's been, or last week, I guess it's already been a long week. This week. Um, I, um, I have a better business bureau page and people can leave reviews for my company there. Yeah. One left a scathing review because she had bought a, a, a swing for her front porch and

Justin Bogard:

She

Marco Bario:

<laugh> and she must have confused my company with a company who actually sells porch swings,

Justin Bogard:

<laugh>. I can see that happening.

Marco Bario:

So I contacted the Better Business Bureau and I said, um, I actually don't sell any products,

Justin Bogard:

<laugh>, they gracious. I don't, I don't swing porches, I don't sell porch swings, I don't do anything with porches or swings<laugh>.

Marco Bario:

So they took, they graciously took that review down.

Justin Bogard:

That's good. My, my first company was called Bright Path, and then the initials, r e i at the end for real estate investor. And so there is an re e i company that's kind of an outdoors type of company that's that's local here in Indianapolis. And so people would often get my company confused with that. And so they would look up on Google, the phone number, and then they would call me or they would text me and they would start talking to me about stuff. I'm like, I, I don't know what the heck you're talking about,<laugh>. And I finally realized, oh, you're talking about the the Outdoors Company. Oh, I'm sorry. You got, you know, yeah,

Marco Bario:

We're not local. That's a big company right? Party.

Justin Bogard:

Well, I'm sorry. There is a local, uh, franchise here.

Marco Bario:

Okay, gotcha.

Justin Bogard:

To where we live. So, and I didn't, I didn't know they were a national brand, so thank you for bringing that up to till you, um, you know, for, for a while there. I just assumed this is a local, local company that was an outdoors company. So<laugh>

Marco Bario:

So big.

Justin Bogard:

So anyways, we're not here to talk about that stuff. We're here to talk about seller financing, mom and pop paper. And I know that you've been in the real estate business for a little bit now, and you have been on several podcasts and you've ha have been re doing presentations at events and, you know, the basics of notes and another thing in the note business as well. But I kind of wanted to give a little bit of, let you give a little bit of background, kind of where you came from and how you landed in the note business. If you wouldn't mind giving us a quick, quick overview of that.

Marco Bario:

Yeah, you got it. Um, let's see. I'll go back ways you mentioned the, the, the television stuff. So I'll go back a little bit. I, I live in Los Angeles and, um, in Sherman Oaks, California. And I moved here over 30 years ago. Um, I'd gone to school in Boston and I studied, uh, television production in a school called Emerson College, which, um, uh, uh, Sunday, uh, night, uh, two of our graduates swept best screenplay Okay. Best rector and, uh, and, and best picture for, uh, for everything everywhere, all at once. But, um, so that's awesome. Those are, those are my fellow alums. I don't, I didn't know them. They're younger than mere at that age where people younger than more successful than me. Um, but I moved to Los Angeles and I worked in television for a long time, um, in production offices, and I pushed schedules and budgets around. Um, and then I transitioned, uh, within entertainment to, um, become an executive for a big company called Technicolor. And we provided post-production services to all types of entertainment content. And I was in charge of theatrical post-production in Los Angeles, uh, for technol on the digital side. We were transitioning from film-based services to digital-based services. A lot of technology, pushing a lot of data around, a lot of create creative people working on movies. It was an awesome career. Um, and then I, that industry has always, uh, continued to change. In fact, the technical brand, uh, is no longer around. It was finally purchased a couple of years ago and they retired the brand I was sad to see. But, um, but I was out of the business by then. I was already working in real estate. Um, I got my start by going, I guess it's been about six or seven years ago now. And, uh, I started going when, when, when all real estate meetups were in person. Yeah. I started going local real estate meetup group down in, uh, Manhattan Beach. And, um, you know, every, every month is a, is a new topic. So whatever that month's topic was, that's what I was gonna do. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Cause that's, those things tend to, to go. Um, and eventually I decided I should pick something. So I picked, um, I picked notes. It happened to be the, the month I showed up. And that panel was a panel of note investors and Oh wow. There was a, there was a gentleman there named Gerald lemoyne who was buying, um, non-performing junior liens at the time. And that really connected with me. So that's where I started in the, in the note business.

Justin Bogard:

Very cool. That's a nice little story. So you, you no longer have an interest to jumping back into the, uh, television slash production part of your

Marco Bario:

Life, right? No, sir. Not movies, not TV undone.

Justin Bogard:

So if anybody has any aspirations of being that, just look, Marco was in it and now he's in notes there one should just be in notes now,<laugh>. So Marco, we, we were talking offline quickly before we started recording this podcast, and we were just sharing, sharing some stories and stuff, and we have some similarities on some things that have happened to us. And, and I wanted you to share, uh, what you were talking to me about earlier, uh, that happened to you, I think you said last week.

Marco Bario:

Yeah. Uh, no, uh, 30 minutes ago.

Justin Bogard:

Oh, 30 minutes ago.

Marco Bario:

30 minutes before we, we, we logged in and started talking<laugh>. Uh, so it's still a little fresh, um, at count 10 a couple of times. It, it being a note and being a, a real estate investor at all, um, I can't emphasize enough. Um, there wasn't only a learning curve there for me, but there was a learning curve for being an entrepreneur. A which I'd done a bit of at a well, much larger scale, a technicolor and a couple of the other businesses I was part of. And post-production, we have PNLs and we had sales targets and budgets and things, but, but being a solo entrepreneur and, um, so something that happened 30 minutes ago, my, my business, I market to mom and pops, uh, around the country who hold seller finance real estate notes. And and these are people, Justin, I know you're very familiar, but for those who aren't, who, um, at one point owned a property, more often than not, the people I'm dealing with used to live in the property. Yeah. And they sell it. And instead of their buyer going to, uh, a bank or Quicken Loans or someone like that, an institutional lender to receive a mortgage so that they can, uh, finance the purchase of the property, the buyer and the seller get together and agree, um, that the buyer will, most of the time, although not always give a down payment towards the purchase, and then the rest of the purchase price will be paid in installments over time. Usu usually with interest. Yeah. But not always with interest. I'll emphasize. So when they sell that house, when the seller sells the house and they close their transaction, the seller no longer owns property, but they own paper. And that's just a different type of asset that can be bought or sold. So in my transition, uh, from one career to another, really my third career since I'd had a switch in within entertainment, um, I wanted to do something entrepreneurial. I wanted to do just something where I could connect with, with human beings. And eventually I started down this path of, of buying seller finance notes rather than, than working with non-performing notes lawyers and servicers is what that world is. And now I deal with nice people<laugh> around the country. Well, anyway, um, I had a, a note under contract. It was, uh, secured by a, um, a commercial property in Denver, Colorado. Um, the seller used to operate it as a, uh, he repaired Harley Davidson motorcycles. Okay. And, uh, the current, um, the buyer of that property converted it to a gym. Uh, anyway, um, we were under contract and, um, and I wasn't gonna buy this note, I don't tend to buy commercial property. I tend to just buy from my own portfolio when it's secured by residential property. Right. Um, so I was going to wholesale this note, so I had it under contract and just like house wholesalers work, I do the same thing with paper that they do with property. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll put the asset under a contract and then I can assign my contract to somebody else, an investor or bank or somebody who's gonna fund the purchase of the contract. Um, they're gonna pay a little bit more than I promised the seller, and I'm gonna make money in the middle of the transaction, essentially a wholesale fee. Yeah. So anyway, had this under contract and the buyer was on their way. In fact, I had just gotten the email this morning. The BPO came back, which is the broker's price opinion. It's like a drive-by appraisal. And, um, and that prompted me to, to, well as, as, as, as fate would, would, would, uh, would dictate, prompted me to think of that deal again. I needed to follow up on a couple of things. Well, they reached out to me and said they, they, they already made an agreement to sell the note with somebody else, not already, but after we had it under contract and the person they agreed to sell it to wasn't really a third party, it was the buyer. Um, and this happens sometimes, um, yeah, I don't like it, but<laugh> the, uh, the seller reached out to the buyer and said, Hey, just fyi, I made a deal. I'm gonna sell this note. And how I imagine the conversation went was something like, well, how much are they gonna pay you for it? Yeah. Well, I could pay you a little bit more if you'll accept a discounted payoff. So we took that offer and, uh, and I lost the deal. So

Justin Bogard:

This

Marco Bario:

Me the solo entrepreneur, I like that money for buying groceries and paying my mortgage and yeah. And eventually when I have extra, I go buy notes with it. But, um, but that was disappointing for me.

Justin Bogard:

It's the kiss of death when in mom and pop notes when you start talking with these motivated sellers and you get, you know, uh, a verbal agreement to sell their note or to buy their note from them at a certain price, and then they go talk to the borrower. And so it's something that you just can't control. But it's, it's something I try to emphasize in the beginning, and, and you probably do this too, I'm just saying from, from my experience, because it has happened to me several times to where they went back, it's like, Hey, we're gonna sell your note. And like, oh, really? You know exactly what you just said. Well, how much are they gonna give you for it? Well, I I can, if you, if you'll take this much, I'll just give you that money. Would you be willing to, you know, wipe the debt clean? And, and sure enough, it does happen. So we typically, it doesn't happen very often, but it has happened before. And we always tell the the seller like, look, you know, we don't need to contact the borrower because they're gonna have a piece of paper after we sell that says, Hey, look, you know, such and such is gonna happen and, and you're gonna start paying x, y, z company instead of me. Um, so that, that helps a little bit with them not having to, you know, contact the borrower in our experience a little bit. But yeah, that's, that's definitely happened a few times to us. And we're just like going, you know, smack the hand, smacks the forehead. You're just going like, oh man. Like, come on, we're right there.

Marco Bario:

I have a comment and a question for you, Justin. Sure. Um, the, the comment is this, in this case, this, this buyer, they sometimes conduct a, a pay interview. So in fact, the email I received was, Hey, we need the information and permission from the seller to contact his, his his payor. Um, so he had to, he had to make contact and let them know that this was gonna be coming. Um, I do it too, when I buy from my own portfolio. I like to talk to them, to the people making the payments before I close. Um, but the question for you is this, and this came up technically, I had this asset under contract. It's a mm-hmm.<affirmative>, it's a one page, very, very, um, uh, loosely worded contract, but it is under a, an agreement. Um, have you ever thought of pursuing any kind of damages?

Justin Bogard:

<laugh> ev every time that, that, that hamster wheel starts turning him ahead, going, yeah, it's turning. I wanna take it to this guy. He, he swindled me. You know, what a, but then I think about it, is it really worth my time? At the end of the day, the borrower, and, and I know you're like this too. You're, you're pro of the borrower. The borrower really benefits from it cause it's their house. They lived in it for a while, which unfortunately we couldn't take in, partake in the cash flow that we wanted to get. Uh, but no, I've never pursued litigation on that, that, and like I said, it doesn't happen very often, but I may have a hard time getting through that in court, uh, as well. And I, I know that you know this and the audience brings this too. It's just that when you get attorneys involved, nobody wins.<laugh> No, nobody wins. It's a lot of time and a lot of money no matter what.<laugh>,

Marco Bario:

I probably wouldn't do it in the, I'd probably never do it, but, um, it's being recorded. Right. But, um,

Justin Bogard:

<laugh>, but

Marco Bario:

It, in, in this case, I get it. Yes. It, it benefits the, the payer. And, and yes, I wouldn't stand in the way of that ultimate sts Yes. But it, it happens if another buyer comes in, you know, if I have it under agreement, and Justin, you come in and and try put same, that, that, that's, that's a little dirty, I think.

Justin Bogard:

Yeah, it is. I haven't had one of those situations happen, um, to where I had it under contract and they just resold it to another note buyer. But I definitely have had it happen where the borrower,

Marco Bario:

I actually, you know, when I had it happen, I had it happen once. Um, it's a long story. It was a, it was a girlfriend of the original note holder, and somehow she ended up in the, it wasn't a divorce, but somehow she ended up with control of this asset and she went to sell it. And I told her that the, the buyer was gonna need to conduct an interview, the person making the payments. And she's like, Ooh, we probably shouldn't do that<laugh>. Cause she didn't want this person to call the boyfriend and it to start World War seven for them, I guess. And, um, and she found another buyer who didn't require that. And that's how I lost that deal. So, yeah. Again, did I pursue anything? No.

Justin Bogard:

Well, you, you're due diligence is spot on. It's something that you should, you should do. We don't, we don't do it too often because a lot of the notes that we buy are pretty much brand new, and so the borrower's aware of what's going on already. So, uh, but in instances where we are buying paper that has a lot of seasoning on it, you'll let them know that, I hope you don't mind, but we want your permission. So we're gonna contact that borrower so that they know what's going on. Because that's, that, that's what the borrower and the seller's mindset is like, oh my God, what's, what's gonna happen? Are they gonna, is the borrower gonna get in the way of the deal? We, we actually, funny story, I don't know if I've said this on camera before, but I had a borrower, well, I'm sorry. I was buying paper that I had in a contract, and I was getting ready to buy it and closing paper was being generated. The note seller had contacted the borrower and was explaining what was going on. And the borrower went absolutely zurk on the stellar and was like, threatening to sue and was just basically scaring the lights out of the note seller. And he said, Justin, I am really, really sorry, but I am, you know, deathly scared of getting into a litigation right now because of X, Y, and Z. And this guy is threatening all this stuff that he is gonna do now, this is illegal. And I said, you know, I tried to calm him down, said, look, you know, this isn't illegal. He really can't do anything, anything about it. But I said, if you're not comfortable with it, let's not move forward because I don't want you to, you know, not lose sleep over this deal. I was like, this is, you know, I hope would love to take this over, but it's not worth it if you, if you're gonna cause you more stress. So that was a really odd thing that happened to me.

Marco Bario:

I had a, I had a guy, uh, yell at me after I bought the note. I didn't talk to him before I bought it, but when I closed, I called the, the payor and introduced myself. And he was. He was at me. And you told me not to curse on your podcast. I tell you, I gonna tell you what he said, but he wasn't happy. And the funny thing is, I live in California and he said, where, where, where are you calling me from? And I said, California. He said, California. California. That really him

Justin Bogard:

Off. Oh,<laugh>. He

Marco Bario:

Was, he was an Obama. He didn't like our kind, I guess. Oh

Justin Bogard:

Man, he said that. So,

Marco Bario:

Um, so he, he stopped making payments. It was a performing note. He was so mad he wouldn't make any payments. And we sent, uh, we, we started legal. I started legal. Yeah. And then, uh, eventually the attorney got a full payoff and that was that. So, turned out very well for me.

Justin Bogard:

<laugh>. Yeah. Sometimes situations look a little scary and they end up actually, you know, profiting you very well. So we, we've had a lot of, a lot of really weird situations happen. It's, this is why I love about the note business. It's, it's never the same thing. No two notes are identical. My underwriting is always a little bit different. And, you know, people ask me, I don't know, you know, you chime in, um, if you feel the same way, but everyone tries to simplify buying a note as if it's just a pre-canned answer of like, it's exactly this much of whatever's left on the balance. And it, I couldn't be more further from the truth. For me, it's, it's, there's so many different factors that weigh into buying a, a note, especially a mom and pop note that we're talking about where a lot of mechanics are not sound, it's not done with a title policy. Right. They didn't close at a title company. They don't have a loan policy. They didn't write it on a note mortgage, they wrote it on a land contract. They got off a legal zoom. They, you know,<laugh>. They just, it's just so many things are just, you have to fix on it that it's like you can't Yeah. So

Marco Bario:

It's main street, you know, after the years for me of dealing with directors and producers and studio execs. And I've been screamed at by all the above. Believe me,<laugh>. Um, I, I love, I love the, the sellers. I, um, I I would say if I have a specialty, it's the ones who, um, are more down to earth and we just end up talking. I, I had a conversation with a, a seller, uh, last week and we were on the phone for more than an hour<laugh>. Um, and I think that was a record for me. It was the first phone call to me. I heard about her business. I heard about, um, by the way, she has a title business and she's a realtor in Texas. Oh, she's, she's a resource.

Justin Bogard:

Yeah, there you go.

Marco Bario:

Yeah, no, she's great right outside Austin. She's great. Um, but, um, I heard about her divorce, I heard about her new marriage. I heard about her kids. I heard, uh, did I mention talking about her note yet? No. Um, that's so much of it for me is, is, is getting to talk to people around the country. I really love that part of my job. Yeah,

Justin Bogard:

That's Richard, Richard is really good at that. He's, I, I'm kind of impatient. That's why they stick me back in operations and Richard's kind of the, the salesman of our team here. But yeah, he'll, he'll, he loves it too. He loves talking on the phone with borrowers. He tells me all these stories. He writes these notes on'em, and I read them about each of these loans. Like, oh my God, that is so funny. Or all that's so sad, man. What, how did this happen to them? Like, what, what is going on? And, and things are just so, so different. The, the emotions of being on the phone with somebody to just, you know, appreciate and understand and empathize at what they're going through. And then also just hear these funny things. It's like, I can't believe this happened to them. You know,<laugh>, it's just amazing.

Marco Bario:

<laugh>, you know, you know, most of my customers don't sell because of money. Yeah. There's, you know, yeah, I could use this money for something, but they mostly sell because they're moving on, kind of have an extra note they don't need or want anymore, and they wanna move on. Someone's passed away, the husband's passed away, and now the, the widow, his widow's calling me. And you know, every time a check comes in, it reminds me of my husband and the house we used to live in. And I'd just like to move on from it. What would you give me for it?

Justin Bogard:

Yeah. I, I've seen that happen with us before as well. Not too often with a, with a deceased spouse, but it Yeah, you're right. It does happen because you're exactly right. It's that emotional tie to it. It's like, it just reminds them in a negative way and it's just like, I just need to move on from that. So, yeah. Well, luckily we can help them with that. And you know what, by no means there's either of us here on, on, you know, I feel like I can say this about you. We're not taking advantage of anybody. We're just giving'em fair market price on really what, what we can, what we can afford to do. We, we have a cost with our money, uh, just like anybody else, whether it's our money or we're borrowing money, there's still a cost to it. And we have to calculate that in there and be like, this is what we can give you for this note based on this information. You know, we're not trying to get<laugh> 1% of value or anything. We're, we're trying to give a fair price and, uh, we feel like we're pretty confident on what fair, fair market price is for some of this stuff.

Marco Bario:

Yeah. Every time. Every time for me.

Justin Bogard:

So, so getting back to, to pricing loans, I, I often, um, hear from other note investors. I get into it for the first time. Maybe they bought a couple of deals and, and they buy them from, let's just say hedge funds or maybe there's some sort of website that they can go to and everything's kind of handed them on a silver platter and you know, they have everything they need in front of them. All the documentation, you know, a nice clean pay history, a good summary, executive summary of kind of what the asset is about, how they bought it, why they have it, what's going on with it today, the property stuff. And then you go to a mom and pop<laugh> and you pretty much get none of that stuff. You kind of have to pull information from them. You have to kind of scrape together as what I call discovery. Like, you know, you're like an attorney trying to, trying to go into to a lawsuit. I don't know why I use references to attorneys often, but I do. But you have to pull together all this information. Then you have to think about like, okay, now if they did this under their llc, I need to make sure, can they legally sign under their llc? You know, do they actually have an a valid llc? Like, there's all these things that you have to check and stuff, uh, when you do this model and pop paper, which is why we are able to discount it a little bit more. And then buying it off of like, you know, a website that has everything done done for you, so to speak. So is that your experience as well?

Marco Bario:

Well, when I clo some of those things, like the lll C for instance, I closed through title and I purchase a, a new lender's policy. So they're verifying things like that on my behalf and I'm insured, um, in, in the event that they weren't able to sign because it was, it was titled that checked that for me.

Justin Bogard:

Yeah.

Marco Bario:

Um, the pay history can be rough and can be kind of weird.<laugh>. Yeah. Um, I use affidavits when, when things are questionable. Um, I've had to pay or sign affidavit. Sometimes that's required or sometimes just almost always the seller. We'll sign one. Um, I sometimes they're service, sometimes they're not. This like, I, I write a, a, a newsletter. I can, I can, is it okay if I mention that here? Yeah,

Justin Bogard:

Go ahead.

Marco Bario:

Absolutely. Yeah. So, so every Sunday there's a newsletter that I write that comes out called Seller Financing Sunday

Justin Bogard:

<laugh>.

Marco Bario:

And, um, if you go to my website, port Swing funding under resources, you can sign up for that. There are two tidbits and they're about seller financing and notes, mostly, mostly related to seller finance notes. But anyway, um, this<laugh> in the process of buying a loan, uh, a note right now, uh, secured by a property in Alaska. And, um, it's serviced, although this is an important distinction, um, by an escrow company. Okay. And escrow companies, sometimes they come up in the seller finance world, they're sometimes associated with the title company who closes the sale transaction. Yeah. Uh, or sometimes it's just an independent company. Well, this one's independent, but the, usually when escrow's involved, both parties signed the payor and the, and the payee, the seller and the buyer mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And, and it's a, it's a contract that stipulates that both parties have to agree to terminate the contract. So it's not like, I know a lot of, when I got into the, the note buying business into the note business, I was just in with institutional paper and you can Yeah. As the, as the lender, you can move the servicing anywhere you want. That's not the case. Yeah. When an escrow company's involved. So that became a bit of a that, but we've been trying to close this one for three months now. It's been just sort of a pain in the neck. Mostly because the seller is not friendly with the, I mean the, the, the buyer, the property buyer does not care for the gentleman who she's making the payments to. And she wants to make it as difficult for him and therefore for us as possible. And lo and behold, could you just please sign this form that says you'll release the servicing. We're gonna move to someone, they're, you know, do all the same stuff. They'll send you statements and No, I don't have to do that. Here we

Justin Bogard:

Go. But, right.

Marco Bario:

Um, but it is an important distinction.

Justin Bogard:

I'm glad you brought that up cuz we actually haven't talked about that before in, in any of our podcasts that we've done. But, um, that has been a challenge. Uh, when I first got into the note business there, there was a, a note seller that had create a bunch of seller finance paper and they would use an escrow company cuz in fact, frankly, they, they were cheap. You know, they cost like eight or$9 a month. Cause they're not really servicing the loan, they're just collecting a payment. They're, they're just a collection agency, if you will. They don't have any licensing requirements. They don't have any, you know, uh, debt debt servicing license

Marco Bario:

Under escrow rules, which are, which are still state licenses, but

Justin Bogard:

Yes, but not for like professional loan servicing, like, as we consider that. Um, but you're right, because the way you're explaining is exactly what we had to do. We had to go to the borrower or, and say, Hey, could you please sign this over and release the rights? And then they get confused, like, why, why would I wanna do that? Wh what's going on? What are you doing? And sometimes they don't speak, you know, English as their prominent language. And so then there's another barrier you have to get over. Then they're already skittish because, you know, they, they were unsure about what they were signing to begin with, with, you know, land contracts or not mortgages. So that, yeah, it's a huge hurdle. So when someone has that there, there's, yeah. You know, uh, go ahead and, you know, go, go over, go over the cross sign, you know, unless you watch in the video here, I'm giving the, the, the Hail Mary, um, it's, it's a, if Dan, you know, 50 50 if I actually get that deal or not, because exactly what you said,

Marco Bario:

It's, you know, frankly, it's another reason to have a phone call with the payer. For me, I, I come in peace from that conversation. I come, you know, I mean, of course I'm putting a few open-ended statements and questions out there that allow them to say, well, you know, the roof's been leaking. Um, yeah, it's not an interview so much, it's called an interview, but they don't, they're under no obligation to talk to me. But if I come and I'm friendly with them and say, I just, you know, I figured you might have some questions about this. I wanted to give you a chance to, to ask me the questions directly. Um, you know, one of the questions we receive a lot is, well, is, is my payment gonna change? No, nothing's changing. All we're doing is stepping into the shoes of the person you've been making the payments to. And the only thing that will change is where you send the payment. In fact, more often than not, the company we use is gonna offer some services like a web portal and, and statements emailed to you and your tax forms coming at the end of the year that may in ACH payments that maybe you didn't have access to now. So, um, I usually kinda start with that and then say, oh, by the way, looks like you're gonna need to sign this form. Oh, okay.

Justin Bogard:

Get some phone calls here.

Marco Bario:

It's been busy. It's been busy, Justin. I'm thankful for

Justin Bogard:

That. Good. That's awesome, man. Well, Marco, I know we've taken up some of your time here today. Thank you so much for being on our podcast, episode number six of seven five, brought to you by American Note Buyers. And, uh, go ahead and give your website one more time.

Marco Bario:

Sure. So Port Swing funding is my company, so port swing funding.com. And again, i I, I would love for you to sign up for my newsletter if you're interested enough to listen to this. I'm sure you'll like the newsletter. Um, it's free and it's really lightweight and it comes out every Sunday. So go to the resources tab and you'll see the newsletter sign up there.

Justin Bogard:

That is episode number six for you guys. So we will see you on the next episode. Thanks Marco.

Marco Bario:

Thank you.

Narrator:

Thanks for listening to Be the Bank. We hope you learn something from today's show. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us. Plus check out our channel on YouTube and follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Be The Bank and on Instagram at Be the Bank podcast, be The Bank is sponsored by American Note Buyers. Thanks again for listening.