Intohomes Mortgage Services jumped into direct-mail marketing of trust deeds to individual investors last month for a basic business reason: customers kept asking for them.
"The July mailing is the first time we've offered trust deeds investments in mortgage loans en masse to the client base," says Tom Powell, president of the Reno-based firm.
"We had numerous requests."
Many of those requests are coming from 50-plus investors.
Baby boomers.
And in typical Boomer fashion, they are tweaking the market to fit their changing needs.
"They're coming into the market with money, looking for a return on excess cash," says Powell.
Cash that is money sitting in addition to retirement funds.
They want to make 8 percent or more on that and are discovering the trust deed market.
They want to invest in real estate without the hassle of owning it.
"That end of the market has developed for us," says Powell.His firm, which is licensed in California as well as Nevada, and is in the process of getting an Arizona license, has found its niche in the $3-million-and-below loan market, both commercial and residential.
It's a market flush with cash at the moment, Powell adds."Bigger and hotter in Reno, and continuing on in the same vein." And on the other side sits a hot commercial and residential development market.
Putting those two sides together is what Intohomes does in the trust deed segment of its work.
It's a market that's always been there, according to Powell.
But it's there even more so now."It's like a pent-up demand on the investment side," says Powell.And on the construction and development side the bulldozers moving dirt on vacant lots throughout the Truckee Meadows tell that side of the story.