Bank Contacts

Previously when you got bank contacts from the Jigsaw plugin all the contacts went into one big ‘Contacts’ bucket. Now your contacts are automatically associated with and attached to the bank (see the image below).

We also haven’t had a ‘notes’ section in BankProspector 2.1, probably should have earlier, now we do.

This means that all your research and contact activities can happen in 1 place. No more jumping around different websites and applications. Fire up BankProspector, find your target banks, find your contacts, make your calls, connect, or send your emails from right where you are with all their data right in front of you. Simple.

This change however leaves many of us with (sometimes large) numbers of contacts that are sitting in the aforementioned bucket not associated with any bank record. We’ve have created a fix for this. In your ‘My Contacts’ panel on the bank record you’ll see a note next to each contact that says ‘Link to this bank’. We’re asking members that they go ahead and associate their contacts with the appropriate banks by clicking this link.

We are shooting to remove the ‘My Contacts’ bucket from the individual bank pages (but leaving the separate contacts page) by the end of January. This change will result in improved performance and ease of use for everyone. New members will not have to do this at all and can disregard.

We’ve made the interface much more approachable and we’ve sped things up all around. Finding banks with REO or non performing loans and the REO, workout, or special assets managers who sell them has never been easier.

Check it out.

If you’re looking to buy, sell, or broker non performing assets or REO direct from banks then I designed BankProspector for you. Our goal is to provide you the best, most accurate, easiest to use platform there is for identifying banks with REO and non performing loans, determining if those banks can sell, and finding contacts at those banks who can make the decision.

Among the improvements:

• Separated REO and non performing loans so you can get to what you’re looking for faster
• Added bank watch-list buttons to search results for quicker adding
• Switched out google charts in favor of faster lighter javascript charts (look for more chart funtionality in the near future)
• Moved Linkedin bank contact search to main viewing area of each bank record
• Moved Jigsaw bank contacts search to the main viewing area of each bank record
• Made all of your bank contacts accessible from any bank record (look for more enhancements including creating notes and opportunities for each bank in the near future
• Made bank result sets sort and searchable
• Added non performing loan to reo ratios available on the bank watch list
• Doubled our server memory and doubled our server’s RAM
• The list goes on…

Now with a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee

My friends in the software business think I’m nuts to offer a money back guarantee on a data product but I’m doing it anyway. If you are looking to do business direct with the banks for REO and non performing loans then I am absolutely convinced that there is no better product for you on the market, period, and I’m going to back that up by offering a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee. If you’re not convinced then just reply to your receipt email within 30 days after you signup and tell me why it’s not and we’ll happily refund your payment and send you on your way.

You officially have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain. Sign Up Now

Know for sure if the bank will can sell distressed assets.

Judging from the number of questions I get from members and prospective members though it became clear that we could help you out a little more with some technology. Today we’re releasing some updates including capital ratio flags. Since there’s a slight possibility that you haven’t read everything I’ve written here I’ll go ahead and recap this bit for you.

Banks which are not adequately capitalized cannot sell distressed assets at discounted rates and probably not even at market rates. The reason they can’t do this is because they could be putting their balance sheet in jeopardy. Under capitalized banks fail and and get closed by the FDIC.

The way this works is as follows. Banks have assets on their books at certain values. Those values are determined by a couple of things but mostly their determined by recent appraisals. Due to the dearth of comps and for a host of other reasons the appraised values that banks are clinging to have tended to be higher than what the market is actually willing to pay (unless of course you’re trying to buy a home… in which case it seems to go the other way, go figure…) over the last few years. This is good for the balance sheet bad for transacting.

Banks have to maintain certain minimum levels of capital in order to continue to operate. Banks are regulated as to the amount of risk that they have versus the assets and capital they hold. The easiest thing for a struggling bank to do if it wants to stay in business and has a lot of late and non performing loans or REO and not a lot of capital is NOTHING. If they look busy but don’t sell anything over time they hope that the flood of trouble stops while they slowly write down the value of their problem loans. In the mean time they’ll market assets and look like sellers but they’re not going to let go and take the balance sheet hit on something that could put them under.

To make this whole thing real simple we’ve taken all the thinking out of it. We’ve setup flags around the generally accepted minimum capital requirements.

Banks that have 105% of the minimum capital ratios are not flagged meaning “charge ahead” they can probably sell (though there are other indicators to look at).

Ratios between 105% and 85% of the required minimums are flagged yellow. A yellow flag means that there are some capital issues if there are other bad indicators then they might be approaching a place where they cannot sell.

Finally there’s the red flag. Banks with less than 85% of the required CAR are flagged as red.

Banks with a lot of red and yellow aren’t going to be sellers and are probably on their way out, as is proven on a weekly basis.

As you can see above First Southern National, which was just closed, wasn’t all red it was red and yellow. Beware of spending any time with these banks. You’d do better to wait and see who buys them when they fail… Then you can work something out under the loss sharing agreement.

For those who do not know C&I stands for “Commercial and Industrial”. C&I loans as Investopedia defines it are:

Any type of loan made to a business or corporation and not to an individual. Commercial and industrial loans can be made in order to provide either working capital or to finance major capital expenditures. This type of loan is usually short-term in nature and is almost always backed with some sort of collateral.

“Asset Based Lending” activity falls into the C&I bucket.

With this release we aim to satisfy some subscribers and their need to identify banks and bank contacts with distressed asset based lending portfolios.

As BankProspector has grown we’ve had an increase in the variety in our membership. Some of our subscribers are in the collections industry, many are in private equity or related professions and this is our first step toward broadening the BankProspector offering to accomodate these professionals. We hope that you find this data useful.

More Distressed Debt Data
Although we started out building this product exclusively for real estate investors and professionals what we found out is that we have a lot of private equity investors and other independent investor subscribers who buy bad debt. You’ll notice that all the data that was there before is still, plus we’ve added 4 new distressed asset categories and the tabs are now shown like this:

• CRE – Commercial Real Estate (non-farm non residential, not multifamily)
• MULTI – Multifamily (5+ residential units)
• CONST – Construction (1-4 Family or commercial construction and land development)
• RESI – 1-4 family residential loans 1st, 2nd, and HELOCs
• LAND – Agricultural land
• C&I – NEW Commercial and Industrial (business loans)
• AUTO – NEW Automobile loans made to individuals or households, not businesses
• CARDS – NEW Credit cards issued to individuals or households, not businesses
• OTHER – NEW Other open-ended or revolving consumer debt

Right now every individual bank is showing the new data categories I’ve mentioned above. Over the next couple of weeks the state and US stats and bank counts will be fully implemented. Look for those numbers to start populating on July 1st.

We’re not changing the pricing for now and if you’re a subscriber or if you become a subscriber under the current pricing your rate will remain the same for the life of your subscription. Do expect, however, to see the pricing increase or the model change as the product evolves and the data grows.

After this round of updates we’re looking at implementing ‘flags’ or ‘hotlists’ or other indicators that will make it even easier to identify banks that need to sell distressed assets like REO and non performing notes. Some ideas in that endeavor include:

• Banks sorted by Texas Ratio
• Banks Searchable by Loss Share Agreements
• Comparative flags that would indicate how an institution’s numbers stack in relation to it’s peers
• Lists of banks selling non accrual assets (actually you can do this now but we’ll make it easier)

Easier to Read
If you’re a paid subscriber you’ll notice that on the US and state overview pages we’ve done away with all of the long descriptions in favor of shorter ones, we’ve increased the font size, and we’ve divided the commercial, construction, and residential assets into easier to read categories.

Over the coming month we’re working on:

• Increased Speed – Our database is absolutely enormous. Over 7GB (Gigs) enormous. To put that in perspective an entire Windows 7 operating system is only about 2.5GB. Our system sorts and parses millions of points of distressed asset data. The problem that comes with this is speed. We’re restructuring how much of the data is stored and retrieved and we expect a notable increase in speed when we’re done.
• Better Displays – Look for more descriptive more interactive charts and data presentation in the coming quarter.

As always we’re very interested in hearing from our subscribers (or would-be subscribers) and we’ll maintain our goal of providing the best possible distressed asset prospecting platform in the business.

• Late and non performing auto loans
• Late and non performing credit cards and other revolving loans
• Commercial and Industrial (non real estate) debt – asset backed etc.

Feedback from our members is definitely driving the direction of the product. Keep it coming and good luck with your distressed debt deals.

People who are actually in the business who are actually doing deals know that you need direct relationships with real sellers. Sellers aren’t always banks but a good portion of them are and banks are becoming increasingly interested in selling notes (that is the word on the street). One reason for the (reported) new interest is the foreclosure mishaps that we’ve heard so much about. If a bank sells the note they can avoid missteps in the foreclosure process, title problems, and management headaches and losses that are inevitable with certain REO

Building relationships with sellers, especially banks, takes time. Why not spend that time with the best qualified prospects? But how do you know who the best qualified prospects are? I’d argue that if a bank sold non accrual assets last quarter then it is a process that they’re familiar with, that they’re comfortable with, they probably have a system and/or personnel in place to process the whole thing. This is not to say that if they didn’t sell last quarter that they won’t sell this quarter, but transaction history is a pretty good indicator.

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve just added ‘Nonaccrual assets sold during the quarter‘ to every bank report. Members should look for an update soon in the BankProspector User Guide. This figure shows, in total dollars, how much, if any, nonaccrual was sold during the course of the quarter.

Click on the image in the post above to see where you’ll find Nonaccrual Assets Sold on the BankProspector individual bank records.

You can download a sample report with Nonaccrual assets sold called out here: Non Accrual Assets Sold | Call Report Data (193)

To learn how you can get this type of data for free, sign up for the Bank Prospecting Email Mini Course

Last year, I subscribed to the Lane Guide.  While the guide had lots and lots of information and phone numbers, I could never get to the right people and it never got me a property.
I don’t know or think I can make this work for me although I tried something similar in the past.
I need to talk to the real people who have the assets and want to sell them. I need them……

I hear this a lot, most of our subscribers have had other asset manager guides or directory subscriptions in the past. I think one of the big challenges with a ‘guide’ or a directory is that the data is old by the time you are done entering it. In an industry where there’s been broad consolidation and closures (15%-20%), where bankers are moving from bank to bank just to stay employed, I have a hard time seeing how a guide can stay current.

BankProspector provides all the financial data you need to find and qualify lenders with assets including late and non performing loans and REO, and the contact plugins we use connect to live databases of information that are curated every day by thousands of people (crowd sourced).

I wouldn’t claim that we have the end-all solution for doing business with banks but I designed it based on my own needs as an auctioneer operating outside of Boston MA calling on any number of the 180+ banks located here looking for new business.

I’d say anyone who is serious about remaining in this business and thriving through this real estate crunch needs to have solid bank relationships, our goal is to provide tools and data to real professionals who use our data to make the necessary relationships and make more money.

Here’s another one:

Hello I am a financial consultant and finder of reo’s and npn’s for my buyers, but i need to be in direct contact with bankers or asset managers so as to be able to give them my buyers orders for these products. How much will it cost me to become a member and when I do will I have direct contact with someone who can fill my orders. I’m fairly new to the business but I am having a lot of trouble filling and closing deals because the buyers want me to be directly to the bank in order to avoid daisy chains. If your company can help me I will be forever grateful for you helping me to achieve success in my endeavor to become successful in this business. I ‘ve taken a lot of suggestions and this was one of the best. I hope I’m on the right tract by making contact with your company.

I’m afraid there’s no shortcut to getting banks as clients. We provide research software, contact data, and some training/education on what to do with it all so that you can identify banks and bank contacts. We do not put you directly in touch with decision makers. You have to find, approach, qualify, and make your own deals. Any other route and you are not direct, that’s all there is. Anyone who can get in the middle will want a piece and right they should, that’s the way this business works.

The only way I know to be successful in this business is to find the right banks, find the right contacts at those banks, then call, email, or otherwise contact them until they pay attention to you.

Pricing is as low as $25/month with an annual plan.

An ALLL methodology is a system that an institution designs and implements to reasonably estimate loan and lease losses as of the financial statement date.

Later this week I’ll be bringing you more information about how to use this in your prospecting. I recently learned form one of our members, a former Wall St banker, about how to use this number to do a back of the napkin calculation to determine what your maximum deal volume would look like for any bank. Very cool.

This is significant for obvious reasons, not the least of which is that banks are going to be MUCH more motivated to sell REO and nonaccrual loans that are covered under loss sharing agreements.

New in BankProspector: See Which Banks are Holding What Assets Under Loss Sharing Agreements

Starting April 30th 2011 BankProspector will let you search and sort for banks with these agreements. The data is even better than that, you’ll be able to see exactly what’s covered under the agreement. I don’t know about you but I think this is pretty exciting stuff. The new report includes the following assets:

Loans Secured by Real Estate

1. 1-4 family residential construction loans
2. Other construction loans and all land development and other land loans
3. Secured by farmland
4. Revolving, open-end loans secured by 1-4 family residential properties and extended under lines of credit
5. Closed-end loans secured by 1-4 family residential properties secured by 1st liens
6. Closed-end loans secured by 1-4 family residential properties secured by junior liens
7. Secured by multifamily (5 or more) residential properties
8. Loans secured by owner-occupied nonfarm nonresidential properties
9. Loans secured by other nonfarm nonresidential properties
10. Commercial and industrial loans

Other loans

1. Credit cards
2. Automobile Loans
3. Other consumer loans
4. Lease financing receivables

We’ll probably start by showing just the real estate loans but I have had some call for consumer and C&I debt info so we’re looking into adding that as well.

For each of the loan categorie you’ll be able to see the loan totals in 30-89 day late, 90 day late, and nonaccrual status. Nice!

and REO including…

1. Construction land development and other development loans
2. Farmland
3. 1-4 Family Residential Properties
4. Multifamily (5 or more) residential properties
5. Commercial properties

And if you’re a geek like me you’ll also be interested to see the portion of the OREO covered by the loss sharing agreement. This is fairly big stuff if you know what you just read and it could potentially change who you’re approaching and how. I’m ready to hear a different opinion on that but I think I’m right.

Stay tuned for more updates on the way.