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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Q Edmonds interviews Eddie Speed, a veteran in the note business. Eddie shares his journey of over 45 years in the industry, emphasizing the importance of market timing and the benefits of being the bank rather than a landlord. He discusses his mission to educate others on seller financing and the significance of building strong relationships in business. Eddie also highlights the current market opportunities for notes and his future goals in helping others succeed in real estate.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Eddie Speed (00:00)
It’s a less good time for rentals. Although you can look at Facebook and everybody says, see, that’s what you should do in inflationary times is buy rentals. And I’m like, that is not experience talking. That is logic talking. People that were saying that were trying to logic out why that was true. And in reality, inflation made expenses on rentals go up way more than rents went up. And so rentals quit making.near as much money. About half the income of rentals is what you used to make compared to 2019. About half the net income. And it’s because of inflation.
Quentin Edmonds (02:08)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I am excited to be here today. I’m excited because we have another fantastic guest. We’ve got somebody who is a specialist in notes. He’s the specialist note guy. And I can’t wait for him to dive in and tell you what makes him a specialist, how he do what he do and how he does what he does. I don’t know the proper English way of saying it is, but.He is going to take you into his world and give you information and nuggets about how to be successful when it comes to manufacturing notes. And so I am super excited to introduce you all to Mr. Eddie Speed Mr. Eddie, how you doing today,
Eddie Speed (02:53)
I’m great. How are you?Quentin Edmonds (02:54)
man, I’m doing fantastic. Thank you so much for being here today. Could have been anywhere in the world, so I’m glad that you’re here. And let’s do this. I want to dive right in. I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. ⁓ If you can give us a little bit of an origin story of kind of how you got into what you’re doing. We love origin stories. And then geographically, where you are in the world, you know, we would love to know that as well. And so, Mr. Eddie sir, you have the floor.Eddie Speed (03:22)
All right, well, Hugh, I started this business 45 years ago in 1980. So I’m an old guy in the business. Like people say they’re the OG. I’m the real OG on this, right? And people say, well, have you done something so long? And the answer is you do something so long because, first of all, you love what you do. And it works really well in a lot of different markets, right?Quentin Edmonds (03:28)
Wow, yeah.Gotcha. Yeah.
Eddie Speed (03:50)
So that’s the thing about it is I’m a note guy and you say, what is a note guy? I show people how to be the bank. Instead of being a landlord or flipping houses, I show people how to be the bank. You ever pay the bank, Q? You ever send the bank a problem with your hot water heater or your roof or your carpet or your tenant? You ever do that?Quentin Edmonds (04:04)
Mm-hmm.Eddie Speed (04:14)
No, you just send them the payment. And that’s what I show people how to do is be the bag.Quentin Edmonds (04:19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. I love it. You show people how to be the bank. I love it. And so give me a little bit of origin story. How did you get into this? Like when did it, I know it’s 45 years ago, but when did it spark that, this is something that I can be successful in. I can wrangle this down and create success out of this. When did you get that moment?Eddie Speed (05:27)
Well, I started in a market that was really good timing for notes. Okay. And the reason it was really good timing for notes is because it was a high inflation time, 1980. Interest rates were really high and inflation was really high. And so when inflation started kicking up again, about 22, we instantly knew it was going to be a great time for notes.Quentin Edmonds (05:31)
Hmm. Yeah.Eddie Speed (05:51)
It’s a less good time for rentals. Although you can look at Facebook and everybody says, see, that’s what you should do in inflationary times is buy rentals. And I’m like, that is not experience talking. That is logic talking. People that were saying that were trying to logic out why that was true. And in reality, inflation made expenses on rentals go up way more than rents went up. And so rentals quit making.near as much money. About half the income of rentals is what you used to make compared to 2019. About half the net income. And it’s because of inflation.
Expenses went up on rentals. Taxes, insurance, plumbers, water heaters, roofs, all of that, right? All that anybody knows. And so then it became more profitable to be the bank. You say, what do you mean be the bank? I mean, sell the house to somebody and you are the lender. You’re the bank.
Quentin Edmonds (06:45)
Yeah.Eddie Speed (06:45)
sell or financeit, and you will probably net about two and a half times the net income of being the bank on the same house you’re renting. So that’s the thing is that I brought a very clear market timing opportunity to the situation, right? I’ve been doing this for all these decades, but I know when the market is gonna be really good for us. And when I saw that, then all of sudden I started,
Quentin Edmonds (06:54)
Yeah.Yeah.
Eddie Speed (07:13)
Do you know how many rent houses there are, Q, in the whole United States? About 18 million. There’s about 18 million rent houses. Is that crazy? And so if you could just show people how to do something different with their rental to have a lot less aggravation, to not get the two o’clock phone calls and the tenants and toilets, but just be the bank. And that’s what I’ve really had a vision of ⁓ a couple of years ago is that I couldQuentin Edmonds (07:17)
I do not.Wow, that’s amazing.
Eddie Speed (07:41)
show people how to do this. And that’s what we’re on a kind of a campaign to help people with. And whether you don’t, maybe you don’t have a rent house. Wouldn’t you rather be the bank than a landlord?Quentin Edmonds (07:49)
Hmm.Mm, come on, come on. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love it, man. I love the way you’re bringing this now. love why you got into it. I love you talking about the benefits. And so, you know, 45 years ago you started this, you know, and they call you the real OG. And so you’ve seen a lot, you’ve experienced a lot. And so I have a statement where I say destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning as we have journeyed throughout our life.
there are moments that kind of make us who we are today. So you’ve been on this journey for 45 years. So I would love to know what has these moments taught you about yourself as you have acquired notes, have you became successful, you went through the different transitions. What has it taught you about you? Has it taught you motivation? Has it taught you to be consistent? Has it taught you perseverance? What has this journey taught you about you?
Eddie Speed (09:17)
This journey has taught me that I have the opportunity to be a go-giver in a market situation that a lot of people don’t know quite what to do in. And it has said, OK, Eddie, you’ve trained for this party for all these years, and now all of sudden there’s a big audience that needs your help. Now you get to be the go-giver and help them do that.And so I’m, you know, I’m not going to take, I can’t give you a shot cue and teach you what I’ve learned in 50,000 notes. can’t, I can, I have a school and I’m going to help you do it, but I can’t give you all of that medicine at one time, but I can take you to the path to say, if you want better, I can show you better how to do this and not go make mistakes that you would be more prone to make.
because I can eliminate mistakes by giving you a clearer path. And I think that’s where I’m at in my career.
Quentin Edmonds (10:14)
I love it. No, I absolutely love it. I love the fact you have an academy, you want to teach people. It seemed like that’s the through line is that you really want to empower people. And I absolutely love that. I have to ask you, what is the next real goal for you? Like, what are you looking to solve at scale next?Eddie Speed (10:31)
Well, we spent a lot of last year building a machine in one of our companies where we could be a vendor helping people create seller financing with the whole process of ⁓ finding the right realtor, managing that realtor process to make sure they’re going to go find a seller finance buyer that’s really good, like a good buyer, good down payment, really qualified, very likely to pay with not a problem.finding you, helping you get the underwriting done correctly, helping you close it and help you paper it in the right way. Not homemade looking stuff, but good stuff. And then all of a sudden we box that loan up and help you in different ways go sell maybe even part of that monthly payment. You don’t have to go sell all of your monthly payment. And so we basically are, we create a system where we make your loans
look just like mortgage banking loans, right? Not homemade seller financing, but really high quality. And so we now have that machine in place and we’ve now kind of proven the concept and we want to roll the tires on it. Because there’s, as I said earlier, there’s 18 million rent houses. How many happy landlords? Not near as many as there were, right?
Quentin Edmonds (11:31)
Mmm.Yes, sir.
Eddie Speed (11:52)
So we feel like that’s a big gap in the market that we can really help people fill.Quentin Edmonds (11:57)
Absolutely. Absolutely. love it. So I love how you saying we again, you want to help people. So what you have been talking about is relationships and relationship building, right? And I want to get your perspective on just that. Have you built good relationships within business? Has it served you well? What is your perspective on relationship building? So give me a little bit about your style of building relationship and how it has impacted you.Eddie Speed (12:25)
Well, I mean, that’s been my whole career thesis is relationships, right? And ⁓ most of the business that I’ve done have been recurring customers, people that I did business with that want to come back and do business with us again. Right? And so the only way that works is that your customer has to be number one. Your customer’s successThat is the theme that every staff meeting every month, that is the second slide. The first slide is my core values. The second slide every month is our customer success is our number one goal. So you can bet that if that’s what we focus on as a company, then our customers feel that.
Quentin Edmonds (13:13)
Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it, Mr. Eddie. Listen, Mr. Eddie, is there any topic that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about? And or is there any words of education, inspiration or motivation that you want to leave people? So any topic that I have not brought up that you want to talk about? And do you have any word kind of motivation, education that you want to leave people? I would love to hear it.Eddie Speed (14:27)
I think a lot of people have been in different aspects of real estate and over the past 10 years, there’s been different things that were really good in various markets, right? That’s called market timing. The market timing today for being the bank, for notes, I believe is, I would challenge you that it is likely the best single thing you can do in real estate at the moment.There’s been great timing for multifamily, All of a sudden, not so good, right? There’s been great timing for rent houses. All of a sudden, not so good, right? So there are things that work best and it is that you can’t fight market timing. If you find the right thing to do in the market, then you’re gonna have the wind in your back, not in your face.
Quentin Edmonds (14:59)
Yeah.Yeah.
Eddie Speed (15:22)
Right now is a great market timing for notes. I would challenge you, probably the best single thing you maybe could consider pivoting to in your real estate.Quentin Edmonds (15:33)
I appreciate you so much. Listen, if Mr. Eddie, if someone wanted to get in contact with you, if they wanted to reach out to you, if they wanted to collaborate with you, learn more about how you’re doing, what you do, how can they get in contact with you,Eddie Speed (15:45)
So I’m gonna give you a couple of great resources. First of all, we have a podcast where we have a lot of people that have been in real estate and pivoted to notes. That’s called Note School TV. It’s on YouTube, Note School TV, right? It’s got a lot of interviews where a lot of people have said, I was doing this and now I switched to this. My life used to look like this and now it looks like this. Like very good, right? The second thing is, is I’m gonna give your audience a starter kit.Okay, and that starter kit is going to go from how you would even think about being the bank to actually how you start that process. And so it’s called Note School TV forward slash real pro. So it’s for your audience, real pro starter. And it’s a video series and it’ll be it’s not going to be it’s not going to be complicated. It’s going to show you
It’s going to answer a lot of questions people commonly have. What happens if a note defaults? How would I get started? What does that look like? All of that is how we’re going to take people down the right path to get started.
Quentin Edmonds (16:49)
Yeah, I love it. ⁓ man, this is so good. I appreciate you, Mr. Eddie. Listen, let me say three things to you. First, definitely thank you for your time because you could have been anywhere in the world, but you chose to spend time with us. So thank you for your time. Thank you for your story, the way you, your narrative, the way you deliver it about, ⁓ about notes being a specialist in notes and how to help people really think about that.pivoting to this juncture within their real estate space. I greatly appreciate that. And definitely thank you for your mindset, the way you think and bringing that perspective to this platform. Mr. Eddie, I appreciate you being here, sir. Thank you so much. Absolutely. So listen, y’all heard Mr. Eddie. You can’t tell me this wasn’t valuable for you. I’m sure it got you maybe thinking outside the box. So look in the show notes, get in contact with him, check out.
Eddie Speed (17:29)
Thank you.Quentin Edmonds (17:42)
the No School TV, plug into the podcast, get to know him, connect with him, but definitely make sure you are subscribed here because you do not want to miss out on the amazing people that we’re going to continue to bring up. So Mr. Eddie, I just want to say thank you again and to everyone else. Have a fantastic day.
