We've used "seller financing" on two self storage deals in the past year.

And it raised our cash on cash return by 20%+.

And lowered the amount of capital we needed by $500k.

Here's a THREAD about a deal of mine and how this magical debt structure can work.

👇👇

My method is simple. In the late stages of negotiation I submit two offers:

One at a lower price.

And one at the exact price the seller wants but with him holding back 10-20% of the purchase price in the form of a 2nd mortgage (with a second position to your bank loan).
Contrary to popular belief seller financing rarely includes the seller holding back 70-80% and acting as your bank.

Two reasons:

#1 most have some debt on the property.

#2 most want most of their money now.
Have you heard the saying:

"you name the price and i'll name the terms?"

This is a case of that situation exactly.

Lets paint a picture here:
Last week I was negotiating with a seller on a property in a small western PA town.

Not many interested buyers so I knew I had some leverage.

His asking price was $4.5MM. I wanted to pay $4.2M.

After a week or two and a lot of back and forth I found his lowest number.
$4.325MM.

At that point I made the two offers.

One at $4.2MM with normal terms and a bank financed closing.

The second at a price of $4.325MM with $500k of "seller financing".

So lets go over the dynamics:
My advantage is clear.

Instead of getting 70% ($3MM) financed through my bank and coming up with the last 30% ($1.3MM)...

I finance 70% ($3MM) through my bank, 11.5% ($500k) through the seller, and only needed to come up with 18.5% ($800k).
And when you raise money on a deal the capital you raise is expensive over time.

Generally 25% per year is what you pay to your LPs or what you expect as a return on your own capital.

But the seller only gets 5%.

Lets talk about how its structured with him:
Here's a picture of my Letter of Intent.

It's a 5 year term, meaning the rate is locked for 5 years. After that the rate goes up to 7%.

If I ever refinance, which I plan to do at 18 months, I have to clear his loan and pay it off.
Our bank is fine with this because our entire debt obligation on the deal still meets their 1.25x debt service coverage ratio. Aka its juicy.

And they have first position. Meaning if we default, they get made whole first.

+ they trust us and like us (that matters, a lot).
I don't use this on every offer.

Definitely not on competitive properties.

And not unless I have some leverage and rapport with the sellers.

Because it's a risk for them. They are your new banker. You stop paying or run the property into the ground, they lose big.
Note:

This increases your risk. It increases your leverage. And your obligation on a monthly basis.

Do not do this unless the deal is juicy enough to support the added debt.
@moseskagan @fortworthchris @SSal1234 @laughridge @scottyo21 @baldridgecpa @amandaorson @MattLasky @MarcSGIlbert + anyone else...

What did I miss? How have you utilized seller financing?

More from Nick Huber

How to get smarter very fast:

Interact with smart people here on Twitter who have different world-views than you do.

And let them change your mind on something.

Here are the 30 people you should follow (along with my favorite tweet from each)👇👇

Twitter can be terrible if you follow negative people.

It can also be more valuable than a college degree if you follow (and network with) the right people.

You get to look right into their brain and read a daily narrative of HOW they think.

Ok lets go:

#1: @ShaanVP

You know he's all about venture capital based entrepreneurship. I'm about small (non-sexy) business. We disagree on a lot of stuff.

But he's done it and he's won. Bonus follow: @theSamParr (@myfirstmilpod podcast


#2: @fortworthchris

He is where I want to be in 15 years. Has built a massive real estate private equity firm from the ground up. Super grounded with what the way he does business and his podcast @theFORTpodcast is top


#3: @Julian

I'm a scattered thinker and procrastinator.

Julian is a master of clear thinking and simple but effective writing. A world class example of content marketing and

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Reading this article, the story sounds pretty wild. But I spent a weird amount of time with Martin Shkreli, and I’m not surprised the journalist fell in love w him

A few years back my team built an app called Blab. It was like clubhouse before clubhouse.


When he first joined the app I had no idea who he was. I just saw that his live streams instantly had 3-4K viewers. More than anyone on our tiny platform.

I googled him and it came up: “Martin Shkreli, most hated man in America”

I assumed he was bad news

And he was... but also he wasn’t.

He was a douchebag, but he was in on the joke. He was a dick, but he was also very entertaining.

In the mornings he would live stream himself analyzing stocks or walking through drug discovery pathways.

In the afternoon he’d let people call in and debate him live on air. A CNN reporter tried to get him to go on TV, he refused, and said debate me here on Blab, no edits, no tv time limits.

At night he’d host late night convos - and eventually fall asleep on cam

The guy was a pain in the ass but man he drove traffic.

We had big celebs like Tony Robbins, the Jonas brothers etc... he outperformed them all.

At one point he was bringing in 100k users per month directly to his channel. And Bc he was so entertaining, they stuck.

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