The note seller called the borrower on speaker while I sat there saying nothing
I've held land for eleven years and I've never had a tenant, so paper was always going to be the next thing I tried. Same shape as what I already do. Wait a long time, collect something small on a schedule.
A guy I met through a land auction had carried paper on four houses he'd sold off over the years. One of them was a small three bedroom in a mill town, borrower nineteen months in, never a late payment. He wanted out because his wife was sick and he wanted the money in one piece instead of over eighteen more years.
We're at his kitchen table and he says hold on. Calls the borrower. Puts it on speaker. "Ray, I've got a fellow here thinking about buying your loan, tell him what you told me about the roof." And Ray does. Four minutes on the metal roof he put on himself in August, and how his hours at the plant went back up in the spring. Then he says, "you're not selling to somebody who's going to mess with me, are you," and the seller says no, looking at me while he says it.
I didn't ask for that call. I wouldn't have set it up. Half of me thought it was better diligence than any tape I'd ever get and half of me thought I'd just picked up an obligation that isn't written anywhere in the file. Paid 81 on a balance around 62k, servicer had it in three weeks, payment has hit on the tenth every month since.
Ray still sends the old seller a Christmas card. The old seller forwards it to me. I have no idea what to do with that.