Hotspur Investment Group

Have Fun For A Living!

2009-01-01T09:31:00.022-07:00

Hotspur Investment Group is a 31-year veteran buyer of private notes originated from seller financing of property the seller sold to an end-buyer (i.e. "seller-carryback purchase-money" notes).

Hotspur's primary focus since 1996 has been the purchase of private paper (notes) secured by manufactured homes located on rental spaces in manufactured home communities (aka Mobile Home Parks). Much of the paper we purchase in this niche is from MH dealers and investors, working through note finders. Hotspur also offers advisory services for Land Trusts and real estate Exchanging through National Equity Solution LLC.

Real Estate Investments - Hotspur Investment Group also purchases real estate for investment, including single family residential properties of 1-4 units, small commercial, and office properties.

In the News!! Thoughts about trends and reports in the news for July 30th, 2008... A Radical View?

Continuing news reports appear to reveal the extent and depth of malfeasance and self-dealing on the part of Wall Street and the institutional lending community. Some especially revealing commentary over the past week includes discussion on the generic issues, as well as the potential holocaust to come if our government does not change the current status quo of favoring certain elements of society to the detriment of the masses; along with more pointed discussion of just how surreptitious most of the scalawags are proven to be, when examined through a meticulous eye:

The repugnant bailout nation http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/ContrarianChronicles/TheRepugnantBailoutNation.aspx

Why It’s Worse Than You Think http://www.newsweek.com/id/140553

My experience at IndyMac http://appraisersforum.com/showthread.php?t=141764

Angelo's Many "Friends" http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/07/16/Countrywide-Deals-Exposed#page1

Oh... to be "Friends of Angelo and/or Mike!" Talk about Old FOAM-y!

And perhaps the most direct analysis, offered by In his incisive article Wall Street: crimes or misdemeanors? (Denver Post, January 14th, 2008), Anthony T. Accetta, former Assistant United States Attorney in his incisive article Wall Street: crimes or misdemeanors? (Denver Post, January 14th, 2008) at: http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_7770142 , who summed the whole mess up succinctly...

"There has been criminal conduct at every stage of the mortgage business, and there is ample proof that virtually every major investment bank in the mortgage securitization business initiated fraud, or through conscious avoidance or reckless disregard of facts known to them, enabled, aided and abetted fraud. "

Since Congress has chosen to ignore fiscal and moral responsibility in favor of a BAILOUT, we need to send a clear message... Res Ipsa Loquitor!

After watching the documentary "Iraq For Sale" several weeks ago, it struck me that perhaps we as American patriots should contact our representatives and demand that our troops be brought home from abroad, and redeployed on Wall Street to iradicate the fifth column terrorists in our own ranks, who are destroying our economy for their own self-enrichment?! Just a thought to ponder, as I contemplate what other "Radicals" have stated on related issues in the past...

“I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. " President Thomas Jefferson 1816

"You are a den of vipers! I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God I will rout you out. If the American people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning." President Andrew Jackson 1829-1837

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." President Woodrow Wilson 1916

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson." President Franklin Roosevelt Nov. 21, 1933

Upcoming events or articles!

For information regarding NoteWorthy's 22nd Annual Convention October 2-5, 2008, see Announcements section on the left hand border of this blog site.

posted July 9th, 2008
New article at Creative Real Estate Online: Monkey Math & A Dead-Cat Bounce - "It is imperative to stay focused on ways to navigate the foreclosure and pre-foreclosure markets right now because the real opportunity will only come in 2009-2011, depending on the region. So--buying for value is the optimal strategy." see full article at: http://www.creonline.com/articles/art-339.html

The Hair of The Dog...

2008-07-04T14:37:00.006-07:00

June 29th, 2008 - In a world gone mad with “irrational exuberance”, The Hair of The Dog That Bit You probably seems like a logical cure for the “Night out on the town” we spent the past seven years imbibing on in the real estate markets! If the party was that good, perhaps more is better. The thing is, sooner or later, if the headaches don’t get you – the dehydration will!

Incredibly, despite the massive dehydration we now face in the credit markets as a result of all the carousing during the World’s Longest Cocktail Party, many folks (including the Feds, and self-serving Wall Street and real estate industry “bartenders”) seem to think all we need to do is keep swilling those “Hairy Dogs”… until the market “recovers”. Full article available as of July 3, 2008 at: http://www.sellerloans.com/newsletters/07042008/index.scms

Priced To Own--Probabilites Producing Profits

2008-04-14T10:36:00.002-07:00

There is an old expression that comes to mind: "You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool ALL of the people ALL of the time!" Regardless of what the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the government, the lending industry (or even economists who should know better) are saying, the current housing market is still artificially high. If people could truly afford current home prices--on the basis of their actual incomes--the word "crisis" wouldn't appear in conjunction with the present housing market. Click Here to see the rest of this article.

Tip Toe Through The Tulips

2007-12-19T15:28:00.002-07:00

Everybody wanted them, and spent millions to get them. Investors went crazy, scrambling to get their piece and sell it for 100 times the cost. Soon, people were no longer buying them for utility, or even intrinsic value… but instead, to resell them for huge profits.

Fortunes were doubled in the blink of an eye. Poor men became rich, and rich men became filthy rich – without doing a day’s work!

Desperate to cash in on this wildly speculative marketplace, investors traded or sold (often at ruinous discounts) land, produce, livestock, grocery budgets, jewels, livery, the family silver, small businesses – even their homes … to buy into the frenzy.

Are we talking about the technology boom? The stock market? Real Estate bubbles? SIV’s? Wii? Tickle Me Elmo? None of the above… it was Tulipmania!

This mass hysteria over nothing but a flower actually took place nearly 400 years ago, in 1630’s Holland, and it wasn't from high tech, securities, or real estate. It was a small flower bulb that seduced the Dutch – tulips!!

Coming from Turkey to Holland during the 16th century, by the early 17th century these exotic and expensive flowers became so sought after, the market exploded!

When the middle and lower classes began to realize how much money the upper classes spent on tulip bulbs, and how much money they made selling them, they sensed a “fool-proof” get-rich-quick opportunity. Thus Tulipmania was born.

After approx. two years of madness, more prudent investors began to understand that this folly could not last forever… prices could not continue rising forever, particularly in huge increments. As this conviction spread, prices fell, and never rose again. In 1637, when a gathering of bulb merchants could not get the usual inflated prices for their bulbs, the bottom dropped out of the tulip market over a 60-day period.

Word quickly spread, and the commodity market crashed. Confidence was destroyed, and a universal panic ensued. Thousands of businessmen, many of whom were among Europe’s leading economic powerbrokers, were ruined almost overnight. Millions of speculators from the full spectrum of society – lost everything.

Just like today's collapsing “Housing Bubble”, and the ripple effect from the closely related “liquidity crunch” – Tulipmania plunged Europe into an economic depression. The disaster was such an extraordinary event, that even now – centuries later – it helps explain the eerie similarities to our country’s current housing market, the “herd instinct” and the madness of crowds!!

To gain some more insight on how these issues are impacting investment decisions in today's real estate market, see the article Beware The Blue Sky at Creative Real Estate Online's How-To-Library" at: http://www.creonline.com/articles/index.html

Beware The Blue Sky--The Current Housing Market

2007-12-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

Despite the obvious bursting of the housing bubble and the associated freezing up of credit markets, many (suspiciously self-serving?) forecasters and investors suggest that the housing slump is close to bottoming out--or soon will be!

Even now, TOFKAOOATT (The Organization Frequently Known As Overly Optimistic All the Time) aka the National Organization of Realtors (NAR) projects that existing home sales will gradually rise over the next year as "pent-up demand is unleashed."??? This would be great news if it made any sense. Click Here to see the rest of this article.

Liquidity Crunch – The Breakfast of Champions! Part 2

2007-10-11T15:30:00.001-07:00

In a recent interview (August, 2007), former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, made a foreboding prediction of the things to come in the real estate market:

"There is a bubble in the housing market, and the decline is going to be larger than most people expect."

That, my friends, is "A Problem". And it is playing out already, as new reports in September '07 by the Mortgage Bankers Association, and TOFKAOOATT (National Association of Realtors – "The Organization Formerly Known As Overly-Optimistic All The Time") underscore the record pace of increasing foreclosures, and the growing price decline in the housing markets!

To continue reading the full article click here...

Liquidity Crunch – The Breakfast of Champions!

2007-09-10T13:28:00.000-07:00

"Will work for food!"

Talk about "creative financing"… the guy that came up with that familiar hand-held sign had a stroke genius in both financing – AND marketing!

Perhaps real estate investors, notebrokers/ finders, and real estate agents can learn how to turn a similar simple concept into longer-term success – and save the current economic marketplace from Itself in the process!

Let's think this through…

To continue reading the full article click here...

A Return To Normalcy

2007-08-21T09:30:00.001-07:00

As defaulted mortgages and bankrupt lenders bring the weakest segments of the institutional mortgage industry to their knees, investors across the broader financial markets have begun dumping other debt instruments and monetary investments – that would seem to have nothing to do with home loans. As Associated Press correspondent Dan Seymour lucidly observed in a recent news article, “The widening fallout in the U.S. mortgage industry has reminded investors of a risk that so many seemed to have forgotten – the fear of risk itself!”

To continue reading the full article click here...

APR on ARM loans - Fact or Fiction?

2007-06-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

This Forum is related primarily to the private cash flow marketplace, where ARMs are typically not a factor, and where disclosures such as TILS and RegZ are not generally part of the process of buying and selling notes, per se. But Variable Interest Rate notes are an area where even exempt "seller- carryback purchase-money mortgages" may have potential "usury" issues - so it is certainly advisable that you should avoid purchasing adjustable rate notes (private or not), until you have a fairly good handle on the issues that can come into play down the road.

That being said... the formula for calculating APR is set by federal regulation, to enable so much as possible, a direct comparison of the cost of mortgages. The APR formula is much more useful for fixed-rate mortgages than for adjustable-rate loans. Because no one can predict how interest rates will change over the years, the APR for adjustable-rate mortgages is based on forecasts, which can - in hindsight - turn out to be inaccurate, as you have alluded.

Calculating APR's on adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) with the starting interest rate, and
click here