Nebraska note holders range from Omaha landlords to farm families who carried paper on a quarter section. We take your note to competing buyers and show the worksheet behind every offer.
What cuts a Nebraska offer before anyone looks at your payer.
The same worksheet comes with every offer.
| Remaining balance | $129,400 |
|---|---|
| Payments left | 168 |
| Buyer’s target yield | 8.0% |
| Purchase price | $115,000 |
| Discount from balance | 11.1% |
| Our fee | shown on every offer |
| Sell the whole note | Sell 60 payments | Keep it | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash today | $115,000 | $56,200 | $0 |
| Payments still coming to you | None | 108 payments of $1,140 | 168 payments of $1,140 |
| Total you receive | $115,000 | $179,320 | $191,520 |
| What you give up | Every future payment | The next five years | A lump sum now |
Illustrative example. Totals add up the payments as scheduled; they assume the payer keeps paying and are not adjusted for the value of money over time.
The promissory noteThe mortgage or deed of trustA payment historyThe closing statement from the saleA Nebraska note is likely to be one of two things. In Omaha and Lincoln it is on a house: an older home in Benson or Havelock sold to a buyer who could not get a bank loan, or a rental its owner sold on terms after giving up being a landlord. West of Grand Island and Kearney the collateral changes to farm ground along the Platte, pasture in the Sandhills, or an acreage outside North Platte or Scottsbluff.
Farm families hold a good share of the rural paper. A parent sells a quarter section to a neighbor or a relative and carries the loan, and years later the children inherit a payment stream that none of them set up. If that describes you, our page on inherited notes covers the extra paperwork an heir has to produce.
All of these are in use in Nebraska. A deed of trust places the property with a neutral trustee until the loan is paid, and it is commonly chosen here because the trustee can generally sell the property after a default without a court case, which is called non-judicial foreclosure. A mortgage gives the lender a lien, meaning a legal claim against the property, and is generally foreclosed through the courts. Seller-financed sales of farm ground are sometimes written as land contracts, where the seller keeps the deed until the last payment arrives.
The heading of the document recorded with your county register of deeds tells you which one you hold. For land that lies across the state line, the document and the process may both be different, so read the page for that state as well. How each works after a default is a matter of Nebraska law, and the law gets amended, so have a local attorney or a title company confirm it for your document before you lean on this summary.
A buyer prices risk through the return they need on the money they pay you. The harder it would be to recover and resell the property after a default, the more return they ask for and the lower the offer. A recorded deed of trust on a house in Sarpy County is easy to assess, because similar houses have sold nearby and the buyer can look them up. A mortgage or land contract on irrigated ground takes more work: the buyer has to understand what the land is worth, the irrigation that goes with it, and whether a farm lease is in place.
That extra work is why a buyer set up to value suburban houses will decline a rural note or bid low on it. The useful response is to put the note in front of buyers who do take agricultural and small-town paper, and to compare what they say. When you send us the details of your Nebraska note, say at the start if the collateral is rural, since that decides which buyers get asked. The rest of the price comes from the payer’s record, the equity in the property, the interest rate and the time left, each of which is covered in our guide to what a note is worth.
Payments on farm ground sometimes follow the crop year instead of the calendar month. Write down the schedule your document sets and check the ledger against it, so that a payment made once a year after harvest is not read as eleven missed months.
Yes, in most cases. Fewer buyers bid on agricultural land than on houses, so it matters more that the note reaches buyers who do. Expect questions about the land's value, any farm lease and the irrigation that goes with it.
It can be, all else equal. A deed of trust generally gives a buyer a route to the property that does not need a court case, and buyers tend to ask for less yield when that route is clear. The payer's record and the equity in the property also weigh on the price, and can outweigh the document type.
Generally not. A note can ordinarily be assigned by its holder unless the document says otherwise, and the payer's terms stay the same. The payer is told in writing where to send future payments. Read your note for any clause on transfer, or have an attorney read it.
It depends on the note. A buyer can purchase a set number of payments and the note comes back to you afterward, but that needs enough payments left and a payer with a steady record. Where it does work, compare the partial with a full sale before you choose.