Insights into the key people and events in our history.
National Note of Utah, LC was founded in 1992 by Wayne Palmer, in Salt Lake City, Utah. As a veteran of the real estate industry, Mr. Palmer had learned about some of the advantages of real estate paper and clearly saw an opportunity to create a company that could provide specialized financing for buyers, sellers and real estate professionals. National Note started out finding and brokering notes to institutional buyers. The company soon branched out into helping real estate and mortgage brokers structure financing on properties that were difficult to fund by conventional means. In addition to brokering funding from institutions that specialize in purchasing seller carry back real estate notes, National Note provided insights into managing the risks associated with debt instruments, always encouraging the parties to create the notes in sensible ways to make the notes so created saleable to private and institutional buyers. These efforts resulted in many transactions closing, to the benefit of all, which would otherwise have fallen apart for failure to meet conventional conforming guidelines.
As National Note’s reputation and volume grew, so did its awareness that institutional investors were still turning down excellent funding opportunities for what the company saw to be frivolous reasons. For example, one note that was secured by a small shopping center in Texas was declined by an institution because the Board of Directors did not approve of having a nightclub as a tenant in the center. Personal preferences aside, Mr. Palmer could not see how that would negatively effect the ability of the owner to pay the payments on the note as agreed, provided the nightclub paid its rent. National Note ultimately purchased the shopping center note using private funds instead of institutional funds. The mortgage turned out to be one of the best performing notes ever in its portfolio.
Since those early days, National Note has developed a well respected capacity for finding and analyzing opportunities for using private capital in the real estate paper industry and a reputation for keeping its commitments to its customers.
Since May of 1995, National Note has been located at 1549 West 7800 South in West Jordan.
Also in 1995, National Note's accounting system was automated using the NoteSmith software system. NoteSmith was written specifically for use in the private note industry, empowering National Note to accurately track and report broad aspects of note buying, selling, and servicing. This software platform allows us to provide borrowers, clients, employees and management with up-to-the-minute reports on each account. It also automatically totals annual activity and generates necessary tax reporting documents.
As National Note formed relationships with Real Estate Brokers, Mortgage Brokers and Title companies for referrals of real estate notes, it received more and more requests for traditional mortgage financing. In February of 1996, Homeland Mortgage was formed in partnership with Reed Larsen, and Homeland established its offices at the same West Jordan location. With the ability to do conforming residential loan originations in addition to the existing services, National Note and Homeland became a unique one-stop "mortgage mall" where virtually any kind of sensible real estate loan could be originated under one roof, tailor-made to meet the customer's needs. The companies gained the reputation of being "can do" lenders where many mortgage professionals had to refer out files that were beyond their level of expertise or product availability.