The Window Is Open — But Not for Long

April 2025 Changed Everything

In April 2025, the Department of Housing and Urban Development changed everything.

Not gradually. Not in some abstract regulatory way that only matters to compliance lawyers. HUD issued a directive that set off a chain reaction across the entire secondary mortgage market — one that created the biggest buyer's market for mortgage notes in the last decade.

If you've been watching from the sidelines, wondering when the right time to get into this business might be, I need you to understand something: the window you've been waiting for is open right now. And the data shows it's already starting to close.

Let me walk you through exactly what happened, domino by domino.

The Chain Reaction

Domino 1 — The HUD Letter (April 2025)

When COVID hit in 2020, Congress passed the CARES Act. Among other things, it gave banks the ability to extend forbearance on mortgage loans — essentially pausing collections for borrowers who couldn't pay. That made sense during a pandemic.

But here's what happened in practice: banks kept extending that forbearance. 2021. 2022. 2023. 2024. Every quarter, they kicked the can down the road instead of resolving the underlying non-performing loans. The problem didn't go away — it compounded. Five years of deferred defaults stacked up on bank balance sheets like pressure building behind a dam.

In April 2025, HUD issued a letter ending the extensions. Banks could no longer push forbearance on 2020-2024 era mortgages past September 30, 2025. After half a decade of avoidance, the clock finally ran out.

Domino 2 — The Deadline (September 30, 2025)

Banks had two options: resume collections on these loans or liquidate them. Most chose to liquidate.

The math was straightforward. These were loans that hadn't generated a payment in years. The borrowers were deeply delinquent. The cost of working through each loan individually — staffing, compliance, legal — exceeded what most banks were willing to absorb. So they did what banks always do when they need to clear distressed assets at scale: they packaged massive portfolios and sold them at best execution to hedge funds and private equity firms.

The volume was staggering. Years of deferred defaults hit the market in a matter of weeks.

Domino 3 — The 90-Day Clock (October - December 2025)

Any loan still in forbearance after September 30 was officially in default after 90 days. That's not a negotiable timeline — it's how default reporting works. Once a borrower misses 90 days of payments without an active forbearance agreement protecting them, the loan gets reported as defaulting on their credit and the bank has to classify it as a non-performing loan.

For three months, the clock was ticking on every COVID-era forbearance that didn't convert to a permanent solution by the deadline.

Domino 4 — The Dam Breaks (January 2026)

The 90 days were up. Defaults hit borrower credit reports. Banks began charging off loans and selling them into the secondary market. What had been years of deferred problems became an avalanche of inventory — portfolios that banks had been sitting on since 2020 finally hitting the open market.

What had been a trickle became a wave.

Domino 5 — Right Now

The wave is not winding down. It is actively building.

Charge-offs and loan sales are happening in real time. The FIXnotes Trade Desk is seeing $5 billion in UPB per month flowing through our pipeline — institutional inventory that would never appear on a public marketplace.

This is not a forecast. It is current deal flow. Investors right now are choosing deals, not chasing them. That is a sentence you could not have written at any point in the last decade.

The Buyer's Market (By the Numbers)

Numbers don't have opinions. Here's what the market data shows:

2022-2023: Non-performing loans traded at 48-51% of unpaid principal balance. This was the established range. Buyers competed for limited inventory, and pricing reflected that competition.

Last 12 months: The supply wave drove average pricing down to 39% of UPB. A loan with $100,000 in principal balance that would have cost $48,000-$51,000 two years ago was trading for $39,000. Same asset. Same collateral. Same resolution potential. Twelve thousand dollars less per deal.

Right now: Pricing is already rebounding. Current transactions are closing in the 43-45% range as institutional capital absorbs inventory and competition increases.

If you've been waiting for a buyer's market in real estate, this is it. Not in houses — in the debt behind them.

The window between 39% and the eventual return to 50%+ is where generational returns are made. And that window is narrowing with every month that passes.

Why This Is YOUR Opportunity

You're not competing with hedge funds. They buy $100M+ tapes — the massive institutional portfolios that require nine-figure wire transfers and dedicated servicing infrastructure. That is their market. It is not yours.

You're buying the individual deals we break out of those tapes — the $5,000 junior lien, the $15,000 non-performing first, the assets too small for institutional portfolios but perfect for individual investors. These are the loans that hedge funds acquire as part of a bulk purchase and then need to redistribute. They're too granular for Wall Street but ideal for someone building a portfolio one deal at a time.

There has never been more inventory at this level. And there may never be again.

The combination of factors that created this market — a global pandemic, five years of deferred forbearance, a regulatory deadline, institutional lockup periods expiring simultaneously — is not a repeatable event. This is a once-in-a-cycle supply wave, and it's happening right now.

Two Futures

I want to paint two pictures. Not to pressure you — but because I've been in this market long enough to know exactly how both of these play out.

Future A — You Wait

Pricing normalizes. The supply wave gets absorbed by institutional capital — the same funds that always move first when opportunities are temporary. Average pricing returns to 50%+ of UPB, which is where it sat for years before this window opened.

You spent months "learning" but never got qualified. Never got access. The retail marketplace deals you were browsing are picked over before you see them. You're back to cold-calling banks that won't return your calls, fighting over the same stale inventory as every other unvetted buyer.

The window closed. You watched it happen.

Future B — You Act

You complete the Accelerator in 90 days. You earn your CMNS certification — a portable credential that signals to institutional sellers you're vetted, trained, and ready to close. You get access to the Trade Desk and the fixnotes.com marketplace while $5B per month is still flowing through the pipeline.

You buy your first note at 39 cents on the dollar instead of 50. You're buying while pricing is low, while inventory is abundant, and while most people are still trying to figure out what a mortgage note is.

You're in.

Everything You Get

Here's what the Accelerator includes — and why each piece matters:

• 8-module structured curriculum — gated, sequential, with knowledge checks after every lesson. This is not a video firehose you binge and forget. You earn each module by proving you absorbed the one before it.

• Real-world capstone simulation — you work through a full deal from data tape to resolution before you touch real capital. The same workflow you'll use on your first live transaction.

• CMNS certification — Certified Mortgage Note Specialist. A digital badge and portable vetting package that opens doors with institutional sellers, not just on our platform but anywhere in the industry.

• Fast-tracked buyer qualification — certified members receive provisional offer status and move to the front of the line when new inventory drops.

• Waived minimums during the 90-day program — no requirement to purchase entire pools or meet six-figure thresholds. Buy one loan at a time while you're learning.

• Access to $5B per month in deal flow through the Trade Desk — institutional inventory that never touches a public marketplace.

• FIXnotes-exclusive deals on the premiere fixnotes.com marketplace — curated assets selected from the best loans in those institutional tapes.

• Membership in a qualified buyer network that attracts better deal flow as it grows. Every certified buyer who joins makes the pool stronger. Sellers see a deeper, more reliable buyer base. They send bigger tapes. Better deals flow to everyone.

• 15 years and $992K of trial-and-error distilled into 90 days. Every mistake I made, every lesson I learned the expensive way, every shortcut I discovered — packaged into a curriculum so you don't have to repeat any of it.

The Close

I built this certification because I wish someone had done it for me.

I spent 15 years figuring this out. I lost money on bad deals. I wasted years building relationships that went nowhere. I paid for education that taught theory but never gave me access to a single real transaction. Every expensive lesson I learned is now a module in this curriculum so that you never have to learn it the same way.

The Accelerator gets you 90% of the way there in 90 days. The last 10% comes from doing deals — but by the time you finish, you'll be ready for your first one.

The only question is whether you'll be ready while the window is still open.

Take the Next Step

This is the only hard ask in this entire course. Every other lesson ends with a "next lesson" link. This one ends with a decision.

Book a free strategy session to learn how the Accelerator works and whether it's right for you. No pitch deck. No pressure. Just a conversation about where you are, where you want to go, and whether this is the right path to get there.

Book your free strategy session

Or if you're ready to see the full program, explore the Accelerator details.