Alan Noblitt is a nationwide note buyer and a licensed real estate broker in California. His business, Seascape Capital Inc., started in 2002.
Alan has written 22 article(s) for the BiggerPockets Blog.
Real Estate Investing by Alan Noblitt | January 25, 2012Yesterday, a guy called me wanting to sell his mortgage on a small piece of land located in a desolate area, far from any population centers. The parcel had access to water (from a well) but no other improvements. He purchased the property last summer for $60K and had just sold it for $110K. Of [...]
Real Estate Investing by Alan Noblitt | January 13, 2012“Why the heck do you need to do an appraisal if you’re just buying my mortgage note? You’re not buying the house.” That was a question from a recent client, and it is not the first time that I’ve been asked the question. From the note holder’s perspective, the question is quite reasonable. When considering [...]
Real Estate Investing by Alan Noblitt | January 6, 2012Any time that a mortgage note holder calls me about selling their note, one of my initial questions to them is regarding the credit score and current employment of the payer (the new owner of the property who is making payments on the note). More often than not, the caller will have little or no [...]
Real Estate Investing by Alan Noblitt | December 16, 2011 
Yesterday, I was contacted by a person wanting to sell a real estate note with a face value of $9700. That’s right, nine-thousand seven-hundred dollars. The sales price was also $9700, as there was no down payment and no seasoning (payment history). This was supposedly for a house in the Midwest, though at that price, [...]
Read the full article → Real Estate Investing by Alan Noblitt | December 9, 2011When I first started in the mortgage note buying business almost ten years ago, I made the usual rookie mistakes. One error was a biggie, and I should have known better after spending years in sales and business development at a Fortune 500 company. That error was one of the easiest to overcome, as it [...]
Commentary by Alan Noblitt | December 2, 2011If you still owe money on a property and want to sell it using owner financing (creating a mortgage note), would you later be able to sell that note? The short answer is – yes, usually. Let’s say that you own a house worth $100,000 that you’re currently renting out, and you owe $40,000 to [...]
Real Estate Investing by Alan Noblitt | November 18, 2011There are all sorts of ways to buy and sell a mortgage note. A common question that note sellers ask me is how a “partial” works. A partial is simply when a mortgage note buyer like myself offers to buy part of a note. Instead of buying the entire note, the mortgage buyer purchases just [...]
Real Estate Investing by Alan Noblitt | November 11, 2011 
With home prices continuing to drop, these remain challenging times for real estate investors and mortgage note buyers. You can make good money if you pay attention and know what you’re doing, but will lose your shirt if you’re not careful. The National Association of Realtors reported that third quarter numbers were again dismal. Median [...]
Read the full article → Commentary by Alan Noblitt | November 4, 2011 
A bit of good news this week: * The Wall St. Journal (11/3/2011) reported that “the nation’s seasonally adjusted home-ownership rate stood at 66.1% in the third quarter, up slightly from 66% in the prior quarter” and “suggesting a three-year decline in home ownership may be starting to bottom out.” * Consumer bankruptcy filings fell [...]
Read the full article → Economy by Alan Noblitt | October 28, 2011 
Real estate investors, like mortgage note buyers, need to have a clear understanding of not only their own investments but also of the broader real estate and economic world. Your decision on whether to put up your own money would vary widely based on differing assumptions of property values declining 20% over the next five [...]
Read the full article → Real Estate Investing by Alan Noblitt | October 21, 2011 
My experience with most real estate investment gurus has been less than favorable, for reasons that I won’t go into here. There are a few exceptions, one of whom is here in Southern California and who I deeply respect for his intelligence and integrity. My interactions with him have all been so positive that I [...]
Read the full article → Real Estate Investing by Alan Noblitt | October 14, 2011In last week’s blog, I covered some of the main elements of creating and potentially selling a real estate note. In this segment, we’ll go over six other key areas that you should be aware of, particularly if you are considering owner financing. 1. When I called an investor about selling my note, he had [...]
Real Estate Investing by Alan Noblitt | October 7, 2011 
The economies of the U.S. and other developed countries continue to stumble, the stock market is trending downward and threatening to completely tank, and most literate citizens are slowly waking up to the fact that the governments that created this mess are only making it worse. The banks, seeing all of this happen and having [...]
Read the full article → Real Estate Investing by Alan Noblitt | September 30, 2011 
Mortgage notes and the owner financing market have a relative purity that is difficult to match in the rest of the lending world. A mortgage note (a.k.a. real estate note or deed of trust note) is an arms-length transaction in which a party sells his or her property to a willing buyer on terms to [...]
Read the full article → Real Estate Investing by Alan Noblitt | September 24, 2011Real estate just can’t seem to catch a break. Every time that a nugget of good news about property values or sales appears, it seems to be offset with dismal news about some other part of real estate. One analyst predicted that ten million mortgages will default (1 in 5) if Congress doesn’t take action. [...]
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Joshua Dorkin
Mortgage Notes – Dealing with other loans
by Alan Noblitt | December 2, 2011If you still owe money on a property and want to sell it using owner financing (creating a mortgage note), would you later be able to sell that note? The short answer is – yes, usually. Let’s say that you own a house worth $100,000 that you’re currently renting out, and you owe $40,000 to [...]