My seller finance note just got bought by a fund at 67 cents on the dollar and I thought that was an insult until I did the math

The slow pay history is probably exactly why they came in at 67. A clean note on rural Ozark County land with no late history might have gotten 78-80 cents from a fund, at least that's what I've been reading in the note buying space. The collateral tier and payment behavior together basically set the floor before they even run their own model.

The reinvestment side of that math is where most people stop too early. If you can reliably turn a $6,100 deploy into a new note at 12-14% with a cleaner buyer in under 60 days, the 38-month drag on a slow-pay account starts looking worse than the discount. Ozark County is thin enough on buyer pool that your next acquisition at that price point might sit 90 days before you find a qualified mouth-breather willing to sign, which changes the calculus back the other way. I've seen guys in similar rural Missouri markets hold the tail on notes like this and regret it not because of the yield but because the mental overhead of one problem payer warps how they underwrite the next three deals. The $4,800 gap you found is real money, but the question is whether you're actually going to deploy that $6,100 within the quarter or whether it sits in checking while you search.

Ozark County late payers have a way of becoming no-payers around month 60.

What is the buyer's current LTV at this point in the note, and did you pull title before you originated to confirm there were no other liens sitting senior to yours?

67 cents on a slow payer in rural Missouri is actually a real bid.

The thing that jumps out is that $1,800 down on 18 acres is basically nothing, and that is where I would be focused, not on whether 67 cents was fair. I do lease options specifically because I want more skin in the game from the person controlling the property before I am fully committed to their payment behavior for seven years. A buyer who put down less than half a percent of any reasonable land value has almost no pain in walking away, and two slow months in 38 remaining is not a pattern yet but it is a direction. If I had originated this in March 2023 I would have structured a longer option period with a higher option fee, maybe $6,000 to $8,000 upfront on 18 Ozark County acres, so the note I am holding has a different quality from day one. The fund priced your note correctly for what it is, a thin-equity rural note on a buyer who has already shown you twice that collecting from him requires effort.