Where to Buy Mortgage Notes: 7 Sourcing Channels

You can buy mortgage notes through seven channels: online note marketplaces, note brokers, bank and fund relationships, government loan sales, private note holders, assignment chains in the public records, and industry conferences. Only some of them are open to a new investor. The government sellers auction loans to registered, qualified bidders, and most of the qualifying statements on HUD's bidder form require a net worth in excess of $5,000,000 determined under GAAP (HUD Form 9611).

If you want to see what is listed right now, browse mortgage notes for sale on the FIXnotes marketplace. This guide is about the step before that: where notes come from, who each channel sells to, and what it takes to get access.

Why is there no single place to buy notes?

The secondary mortgage market has no exchange and no ticker. Loans move between banks, credit unions, funds, servicers and private holders through brokers, online platforms, auctions and direct relationships. Each channel has its own barrier to entry, deal size and level of competition, and the sellers behind them have different reasons to sell; our overview of who sells non-performing notes covers the seller side in depth.

1. Online note marketplaces

Online marketplaces are the most accessible starting point. They gather listings from many sellers and let you browse individual loans or small pools, review loan-level data, and submit bids without a prior relationship. Some run timed auctions; others list loans at an asking price with room to negotiate. The advantage is transparency: you can usually see the unpaid principal balance, property details and sometimes collateral file documents before you bid.

The trade-off is competition. Every buyer sees the same listing, so the cleanest loans draw the most bids. Marketplaces are a good place to learn how loans are packaged and priced, and a reliable source of single assets, but the video makes the case that developing your own sources is where the best deal flow comes from.

FIXnotes runs one of these marketplaces. You can review the current mortgage notes for sale or search live inventory by state, lien position and loan status. To make an offer you reach qualified-buyer status by completing buyer onboarding: identity and entity verification, a compliance review that includes background screening, and annual re-certification. After that you submit a price on the asset page and the seller can accept, counter or decline. If you are comparing platforms, our side-by-side marketplace comparisons show how the main ones differ.

2. Note brokers

Brokers source loans from banks, credit unions, hedge funds and other holders, then market them to a list of buyers. To a seller, a broker is distribution: a ready list of buyers and a competitive bid process. To a buyer, a broker is access to loans that never reach a public marketplace.

Active brokers send regular emails called tapes. A tape is a spreadsheet of loan-level data: balance, interest rate, property address, lien position, payment status and a value estimate. Reading one quickly is a core skill, and our guide to reading a non-performing loan data tape walks through the columns that matter for pricing.

Broker relationships run on credibility. If you bid and then fail to close, whether from short funds, slow diligence or cold feet, the tapes stop coming. Start with smaller brokers who work with individual investors, close reliably, and work up to the brokers who handle institutional pools. Whoever pays the broker, price the loan on its own numbers, not the broker's summary.

3. Bank and fund relationships

Many notes start at a bank or credit union, but those institutions rarely sell a single note to an individual investor. Selling a pool in one transaction costs them less than selling the same loans one at a time, and they want counterparties with verified funds and a closing record. Our explainer on why you can't buy mortgage notes directly from banks goes deeper on the reasons.

You can still work out which institutions are carrying distress. Every national bank, state member bank, insured state nonmember bank and savings association must file a Call Report as of the last calendar day of each quarter (FFIEC Call Report instructions), and the NCUA collects Call Report data each quarter from all federally insured credit unions (NCUA). The FIXnotes NPL Explorer reads that data so you can screen banks and credit unions by delinquency, Texas ratio and other stress measures, and the FIXnotes Market tracks what closed loan sales traded for. An institution with rising problem loans is a better cold call than one with a clean book.

Funds and pool buyers. Some funds that buy large pools work out the loans they can and resell the rest, sometimes one loan at a time. The portfolio case study in the video above is one example: the buyer resolved the borrowers who cooperated and resold the no-contact loans to an investor set up to foreclose. A pool buyer that knows you close fast is one of the better sources a smaller investor can have.

Servicer trade desks. Some loan servicing companies run trade desks that send loans from their servicing clients, and from other sellers, to a list of note buyers. To get on the list, contact the servicer, describe your buy box (geography, lien position, loan size, performance status), and keep responding to what they send.

4. Government loan sales (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and HUD)

The government-sponsored enterprises and HUD sell defaulted loans in competitive auctions to qualified bidders. These are institutional channels, but it helps to know how they work, because the loans that trade there can reach smaller investors later through resale.

A few details matter if you ever bid. Freddie Mac describes its SPO pools as "generally large, geographically diverse pools" with a typical marketing period of three weeks from announcement to bid date, and its EXPO pools as generally smaller, with a marketing period about two weeks longer (Freddie Mac). Fannie Mae's April 2025 sale paired two larger pools with a Community Impact Pool of about 40 loans totaling $7.2 million in unpaid principal balance, and required buyers to offer loss mitigation and to market foreclosed homes to owner-occupants and non-profits before investors (Fannie Mae, April 2025). HUD's current HVLS sales of reverse-mortgage loans are "structured to promote sales first to mission-driven non-profit organizations and units of local government" (HUD Office of Asset Sales).

For most individual investors these are channels to study, not to bid in. Our anatomy of a GSE loan sale shows what the results of one tell you about pricing further down the chain.

5. Private note holders

Not every note sits with an institution. Owner-financing sellers, private lenders and small real estate investors hold notes they may sell at a discount, and many of them never list on a marketplace. A common example is a former property owner who sold with seller financing, now holds the note, and would rather have a lump sum than monthly payments.

Reaching them takes marketing:

• Data providers sell lists built from public records, which you can filter by geography and loan size.
• County records show mortgages where the lender is an individual rather than an institution.
• Direct mail to those holders, explaining that you buy notes, can produce inbound leads.

Competition is low and each deal is a single negotiated note rather than a bid against a crowd. The cost is volume and time: plan on months of consistent marketing before the pipeline produces. Treat it as a long-term channel.

6. Assignment chains and public records

County land records are public deal-flow intelligence. Two kinds of filings are worth watching.

Foreclosure filings. When a lender starts a foreclosure, the filing becomes public. A lender working a stack of distressed loans may also be willing to sell some of them.

Recorded assignments. When a loan changes hands, the assignment of the mortgage is often recorded in the county where the property sits. Reading the assignment chain shows you two potential contacts: the assignor (an active seller who may have more inventory) and the assignee (if it is a small LLC or individual, likely a note buyer who could become a seller or a partner). Our guide to how an assignment of mortgage is recorded explains what you are looking at.

The records don't show everything. Loans registered with MERS can change hands between MERS members with no new recorded assignment, because MERS acts as a common agent for its members (MERS FAQ). This channel works best when you pick a few target counties and work them consistently.

7. Conferences and networking

As your business grows, your best sources become people. Conferences are an efficient way to meet them, and they come in tiers:

• Note investor events such as the Diversified Mortgage Expo, which bills itself as a note investing conference for "investors, institutional sellers, industry experts, private lenders, and service providers." They are a good place to meet your first broker or servicer.
• Institutional mortgage conferences such as the Mortgage Bankers Association's Secondary & Capital Markets Conference, which brings together "market makers, policymakers and industry leaders" from the secondary and capital markets (MBA Newslink). That is where you meet people from the institutions themselves.

The FIXnotes event calendar tracks note-industry conferences in one place. What turns a conference into deal flow is the follow-up, which our post on note sourcing strategies from prospecting to repeat business covers step by step.

Which channel fits where you are?

Whatever your stage, use more than one channel. If one broker or one marketplace is your whole pipeline, your pipeline stops when it does.

From source to close

Finding a loan is the first step. Moving fast when one appears comes from knowing the rest:

1. Screen the tape or listing against your buy box: geography, lien position, loan-to-value, property type, balance range.
2. Price it with your valuation model for non-performing notes, and test your exit with the loan modification planner.
3. Submit a letter of intent (LOI) or, on a marketplace, an offer.
4. Run full due diligence: title, property condition, borrower status, bankruptcy filings and the collateral file. Before you wire funds, confirm the seller actually owns the note.
5. Sign the loan purchase and sale agreement (LPSA) and fund the trade.
6. Transfer servicing to your loan servicer and record the assignment into your entity.

A weekly sourcing checklist

Sourcing is a system, not a search. Run this every week:

1. Read every tape and listing you receive, even when you aren't buying. Pricing sense comes from volume.
2. Answer every offering, if only with a pass and a reason. Sellers and brokers notice who engages.
3. Bid only what you can close. Backing out after an accepted offer costs you the relationship.
4. Add one new source: a broker, a servicer, a county, a fund contact or a conference follow-up.
5. Log everything: who sent what, what you bid and what closed. After a few months, the log shows which channels are worth your time.

If a channel has produced nothing you would bid on for a quarter, replace it with the next one on the list above.