Category: creative financing real estate

Most real estate training events for agents teach confidence. I’m more interested in what closes deals.

Picture this deal. I’ve seen versions of it across Texas. Seller owes $240,000. The house is fetching $215,000 in a softening DFW market, inventory up 12.3%, days on market at 99, prices down 4.6%. She won’t short sale. She can’t bring cash to closing. She’s stuck.

I know what most agents do here. They try to talk her down on price. She says no. The listing dies.

The agent I have in mind came through our training and took a different route.

She’d spent two days learning subject-to structures with operators who’d actually closed them in Texas. In the room, working through the questions that matter in practice: What does the due-on-sale clause actually trigger versus what it says on paper? How do you write the seller’s disclosure so you’re protected? What’s the seller’s credit exposure if the investor stops paying?

Our agent had those answers. So she brought a different offer.

An investor takes title subject to the existing $240,000 mortgage. Seller owes nothing at closing. No short sale approval timeline. No cash out of the seller’s pocket. The investor picks up the property at current market carrying the existing note at a below-market rate. Our agent earns a commission on a deal that was heading to zero.

That’s a deal structure. You either know it or you don’t.

Subject-to is one tool we go deep on, and it’s not the only one. Seller financing, wraparound notes, acquisition strategies built for a high-rate environment. We cover the toolkit that works when a straight cash offer or conventional financing doesn’t. I keep coming back to subject-to because the knowledge gap here is the most expensive one I’ve seen. I’m not talking about obscure edge cases — I mean the deals filling every active MLS in a correction cycle. Upside-down sellers, tired landlords, inherited properties with high equity and complicated motivations. These are the situations where creative structure wins and where agents who know the tools walk away with a commission their competition never understood was possible.

What Real Estate Training Events for Agents Should Deliver

My frustration with most events in this space comes down to this gap. We teach scripts. We teach CMAs. We teach agents how to deliver bad news professionally. What we don’t build is the skill that changes the outcome. I’ve watched good agents lose deals like this one, not because they didn’t work hard, but because nobody ever showed them what subject-to looks like when you walk it into a house.

I started Black Sheep Convention because I was tired of watching that happen. We bring 12 operators to San Antonio (people who are actively doing this in Texas right now, not people who did it once and now charge to talk about it) and we spend two full days on real training. Ten classes. Ten hours of Texas CE. Five class periods with two tracks running simultaneously, so you pick what fits your business.

We built this event around one rule. Every minute on stage has to produce something you can use Monday. All access in person is $399. Online is $99. That’s the complete price. You’re paying for training, not for access to a sales funnel.

Back to our deal. The structure was half the job. The harder half was the conversation.

“Subject to the existing mortgage” sounds alarming to most sellers. I’ve watched this conversation go badly when an agent hasn’t practiced it. Our agent had. She knew exactly what to say about credit exposure, contract protections, and what happens if the investor doesn’t perform. She walked in confident because she’d trained on this with people who’d already closed it.

That’s what I want for every agent who comes through our training. A conversation you’ve already practiced because you learned it from someone who’s closed it.

One more thing I’ll say. I hear agents worry that a real estate license complicates an investing business. I think that’s mostly wrong. When the cash offer fails, you can list the property instead of walking away. When your investor client needs to move a deal you can’t absorb yourself, you have options. The license keeps you in the room.

What deal walked out of your office last month because you didn’t have the right structure for it?

Black Sheep Convention is September 25–26 at the Hilton San Antonio Hill Country. Twelve operators. Real deals. No pitch fests. $399 in person. $99 online.

I’ve watched good investors walk away from deals they should have closed. Not because the numbers were wrong. Because they believed something false about debt forgiveness, and nobody ever corrected them.

That’s the real cost of skipping debt forgiveness real estate training. You don’t fail a quiz. You leave deals in the ground.

Here are the five beliefs I run into most often across Texas real estate circles, at workshops, in Facebook groups, at closings. Every single one is wrong.

Myth 1: Forgiven Mortgage Debt Always Creates a Tax Bomb for the Seller

The logic sounds airtight. Bank forgives $40,000 in debt, IRS treats it as income, seller owes taxes on $40,000. Seller panics. Your deal dies before it starts.

I get why this one survives. It’s partially correct. Forgiven debt CAN be taxable income under 26 U.S.C. § 61. But “can be” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

What I’ve found, and what we drive home in our StepStone training, is that the IRS insolvency exclusion under § 108 is the exit ramp most investors don’t know exists. If the seller’s total liabilities exceeded total assets at the moment of forgiveness, the forgiven amount is excluded to the extent of that insolvency. Most distressed sellers owe more than the property is worth. They’re insolvent by definition. That 1099-C they’re terrified of? Frequently zero tax owed.

I’m not a CPA and I don’t give tax advice. But I know enough to tell a scared seller “talk to your CPA about the insolvency exclusion” instead of watching them walk away from my offer.

Myth 2: Debt Forgiveness Only Matters in Short Sales

If your business is subject-to and seller finance, this isn’t your problem. Debt forgiveness belongs to the short sale specialists.

I’ve heard this from investors who should know better. It’s backwards.

Subject-to is exactly where my team leans on debt forgiveness literacy the most. When I take over a seller’s existing mortgage, I need to know how much is owed, whether there’s deferred principal from a prior loan modification, and what the seller’s real exposure is if the loan ever goes sideways. Their underwater position doesn’t disappear because I wrapped a creative structure on top of it.

Seller financing has the same exposure. A seller who owes $150k on a $130k property can still seller-finance that deal if we structure it correctly and they understand what happens to the $20k gap. I’ve closed deals that other investors walked from because they didn’t know how to have that conversation with the seller. Do you know how to walk a seller through that math at the kitchen table?

Myth 3: Banks Don’t Negotiate on Debt Anymore

I’ve been hearing this since about 2017. The market recovered, foreclosures dried up, servicers stopped being flexible. The short sale and debt negotiation window closed.

The deal volume did drop after 2012, and I understand why people drew that conclusion. Fewer opportunities, fewer deals, and it looked like the whole system shut down.

It didn’t. Foreclosure filings have been climbing since post-COVID moratoria lifted. More importantly, servicers still operate under CFPB’s Regulation X loss mitigation requirements. Before any servicer can proceed to foreclosure, they’re required to review the borrower for alternatives. That review is a negotiation. A servicer who skips it faces regulatory exposure.

The window didn’t close. Our industry convinced itself it did, which means the competition thinned out. That’s a better market for us.

Myth 4: A License Limits You in Debt Forgiveness Deals

This one drives me a little crazy. The argument is that licensed agents carry disclosure obligations in short sales and debt-involved transactions that unlicensed investors don’t. Stay unlicensed, stay flexible.

Our position at StepStone on this is consistent, and I’ve made this case in front of hundreds of investors: the licensing limitation is almost entirely myth.

In a short sale, my license lets me represent the seller, earn the commission on the closed sale, and negotiate the short payoff with the lender. My commission gets paid from the proceeds before the lender gets theirs. An unlicensed investor in that same deal can only earn on the spread, with less control over the timeline and zero commission income.

I’ve watched investors avoid getting licensed for years over this fear. Every one of them left money behind.

Myth 5: You Can Learn This From YouTube

Free content is everywhere. 1099-C breakdowns, negotiation scripts, insolvency worksheets. What does paid training give you that YouTube doesn’t?

Real deal experience. I’ve sat in loss mitigation calls where everything I thought I knew hit a wall because the servicer was a community bank holding its own portfolio, working from a completely different decision framework than a Fannie-backed servicer. There’s no YouTube video that covers that specific conversation.

My team has navigated botched 1099-C arrangements, sellers who signed structures their attorneys built wrong, and second lien holders who didn’t respond to a single contact attempt for 90 days. Those scenarios don’t come from slides. They come from doing the deals. What our training actually transfers isn’t vocabulary. It’s the pattern recognition that keeps a deal from dying three weeks in.

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Come Fix This in San Antonio

Black Sheep Convention runs September 25-26, 2026 at the Hilton San Antonio Hill Country. We’ve got 12 operators, 10 classes, and 10 hours of Texas CE. Five class periods, two classes running simultaneously, so you build the two-day schedule that matches your actual business.

My promise: no pitch fest. Nobody on our stage selling a $20,000 coaching package. We bring in operators who are doing the exact deals they’re teaching. If they’re explaining debt forgiveness mechanics, they negotiated one recently.

All-access in-person is $399. Live online is $99.

If you’re doing creative financing in Texas and you’ve been guessing on the debt forgiveness piece, September 25 is where we fix that.

Every agent who hears “off-market deal” pictures a cash buyer waiting in a truck outside. I’ve spent years watching that picture kill perfectly workable Texas transactions before anyone even sat down.

Off-market isn’t a buyer type. It’s a situation the seller is in. Our entire approach at StepStone is built on that distinction, because it opens up strategies most off-market deal training never touches. And most of what gets sold as that training is either a marketing funnel dressed up as curriculum, or a two-day runway to a $10,000 coaching close. I’ve sat through both. We built Black Sheep Convention to be neither. Here are four myths I run into constantly, and the mechanisms that break each one.

Myth 1: You Need Cash to Buy Off-Market Deals

This one survives because it’s partially true. If you’re wholesaling to a cash end-buyer, yes, that buyer needs cash. But I teach subject-to purchases, seller finance, and hybrid wraps, and NONE of those require you to show up with $200,000 in a briefcase.

Subject-to is the mechanic I come back to most. The seller deeds you the property, you take over payments on the existing note, and the loan stays in their name. You don’t qualify with a lender. There’s no cash-to-close requirement beyond whatever equity gap you negotiate directly with the seller.

I’ve closed subject-to deals with $3,000 in total acquisition cost. My seller needed out. The bank wasn’t in the conversation. That was an off-market deal, and there was no all-cash offer anywhere near it.

The myth survives because wholesaling courses dominate the off-market training market, and wholesaling centers on a cash buyer. Our creative financing track doesn’t start there.

Myth 2: You Need $3,000 a Month in Marketing to Find These Deals

The skip-trace, direct-mail, cold-call stack is real, and I’m not dismissing it. For high-volume operations, it works. But I’ve watched new investors burn through $15,000 in marketing spend before their first closing, and in my experience, that’s not the only path.

What I’ve seen close deals more consistently is understanding what situation creates a motivated off-market seller before they hit the MLS, and then being the right person when that situation shows up in your existing network.

Estate situations. Job relocations. Landlords with problem tenants who stopped paying three months ago. Sellers with existing financing that doesn’t fit a traditional sale. None of those require a cold-call list. They require you to know what to say when the conversation finds you.

Is your off-market deal training teaching you to recognize those situations, or just showing you how to buy a better data list?

Myth 3: Having a Real Estate License Hurts Your Off-Market Investing

I hear this constantly from investors who think the license wraps their deals in compliance risk. The story goes: fiduciary duties, extra disclosures, one complaint and your license is gone.

Here’s what I actually see in the field. Our licensed investors at StepStone close MORE off-market deals, not fewer. When the creative structure doesn’t work, they don’t walk away. They list the property instead.

When a subject-to offer doesn’t close because the seller wants more than the numbers support, my licensed investors can pivot to a listing agreement on the spot. My unlicensed investors call me to refer the lead out. Those are two very different financial outcomes on the same conversation.

How many deals have you referred out this year that you could have structured or listed yourself?

If you’re an agent who’s been treating off-market investing as someone else’s territory, I’d like to change your mind. Your license is a second option. That’s worth more than most agents realize.

Myth 4: “Convention” Means Two Days of Sales Pitches With Better Lighting

I understand why people are skeptical. Real estate conventions spent 20 years earning that reputation. Hotel ballroom, emotional buildup from the main stage, back-of-room close, “buy tonight.” I’ve sat in those rooms.

Our model is different by design. Black Sheep Convention is 10 classes, 10 hours of Texas CE credit, 12 operators who closed deals this year, and ZERO back-of-room pitches. Five class periods, two classes running simultaneously. You pick your track. You’re in a room with someone who got off a call with a seller last week, not someone who cashed out six years ago and now sells the story.

Angie Rhea, our Designated Broker at StepStone, sets the standard plainly: “We’re not going to be here for you to pick our brains. If you want our time and attention, we want to be included in the deal.” Every presenter in that room operates by that expectation.

What Real Off Market Real Estate Deal Training Looks Like

September 25-26, 2026, Hilton San Antonio Hill Country. Ten classes. Ten hours of Texas CE. Twelve operators active in deals right now.

$399 all-access in person. $99 live online. If you’ve been waiting for off-market deal training that doesn’t end with someone asking for your credit card from a stage, this is it.

Every licensing class, every office meeting, every sales manager I’ve ever heard treats creative financing as the option of last resort. The investors who are actually closing in this market are using it first.

I’ve watched agents park their pipeline for 18 months waiting for rates to normalize. Meanwhile, people in my network moved 12 deals last quarter on subject-to, owner financing, and wraparound mortgages. Not because conditions cooperated. Because they stopped caring about conditions.

The 30-year fixed mortgage is less than 90 years old. Owner financing has been around as long as people have owned things. One of those tools is the newcomer. We just act like it’s the default.

The Myth That Turns Creative Financing Into a Consolation Prize

From every direction, the advice is to use creative financing when your buyer can’t qualify.

That framing kills the tool before you even reach for it.

The sellers I want to reach aren’t the ones who have to sell. They’re the ones who could wait me out for two years. A seller sitting on a paid-off property, or on a 3.5% note they’ve held since 2021, doesn’t need my buyer’s preapproval letter. They need a reason to say yes. Owner financing gives me something to bring to that listing appointment that nobody else on the MLS is carrying.

Most agents wouldn’t know what to say if a seller asked about carrying the note. That gap is where my listings come from.

How Creative Financing in Real Estate Works in This Market

We’re in a stagflation-type environment right now. Our market has the same shape as the late 1970s: prices sticky, rates elevated, conventional volume on the floor. The operators who cleaned up during that stretch weren’t timing the Fed. They understood that terms are where deals get made.

On a subject-to deal, our seller’s existing 3.5% note transfers with the deed. My buyer assumes the payments without formally assuming the loan. The seller gets equity out. My buyer gets into a property at a rate that doesn’t exist in the new-origination market.

Does that require you to know what you’re doing? Yes. Does it require a new conventional loan? No.

On a seller-financed deal, our seller becomes the lender. We negotiate the down payment, the rate, the amortization, and the balloon together at the table. If they own free and clear, there’s no bank in the room. The rate isn’t set by the Fed.

A wraparound mortgage layers a new note on top of an existing one. Our seller keeps their original loan in place, carries back a larger note to my buyer, and collects the spread. It’s arithmetic, not alchemy.

When the Conventional Advice Is Actually Right

A conventional loan beats creative financing in plenty of situations, and I’ll name them.

If my buyer has a clean profile, a solid down payment, and is buying something that will appraise at contract price, conventional is often the cleaner path. Fewer moving parts. Our title company knows the drill.

If our seller needs full cash-out to fund their next move, a carry-back complicates their timeline. I’m not going to paper over that.

Creative financing doesn’t fix every situation. Treating it as an emergency option is the mistake. Who do you bring it to? The seller who doesn’t HAVE to sell. That’s when it wins you a listing your competitors can’t touch.

The Skill Gap Nobody Wants to Admit

My agents at StepStone train on how to present these structures to sellers. We do it because most brokerages won’t touch the conversation. Their agents wouldn’t know what to say if an owner asked about carrying the note.

When I walk into a listing appointment and say, “If you’re not in a hurry, I have three ways to structure this that don’t require my buyer to go to a bank,” I’m having a different conversation than every other agent on that street. That’s a listing I can win. That’s a deal my buyer can close.

Our agents who can run that conversation are closing deals their peers are walking away from.

Learn It in Person: Black Sheep Convention

September 25-26, 2026. Hilton San Antonio Hill Country. Twelve operators who are actively doing this.

Ten hours of Texas CE credit. Ten classes across five class periods, two rooms running at once, so you pick what fits where you are right now. $399 for full in-person access. $99 to attend live online.

Nobody sells you a five-figure mentorship from the stage. We don’t do pitch-fests. We do real deal structure, real numbers, real conversations about what’s actually closing. Operators in the trenches, sharing work you can copy Monday morning.

If you’re a Texas agent or investor who’s been holding creative financing at arm’s length because nobody’s walked you through it properly, come to San Antonio in September. You’ll leave with your CE hours and deal structures you can use the following week.

Register at blacksheepconvention.com.

The Rate Environment Isn’t the Variable You Think It Is

Our market right now rewards the people who control the terms. The investors I know who are closing aren’t waiting for rates to drop. They’ve moved past that question entirely.

Creative financing in real estate is the skill moving inventory in the market we actually have.

Our agents know how to do it. Come learn it with us.

The Texas real estate market is shifting, and it’s time to shake off the old ways of thinking. With rising interest rates and a brewing economic storm, conventional financing is becoming a dead end. If you’re still waiting for traditional solutions to come back, you’re missing the boat. Creative financing isn’t just a trend; it’s the future. Whether you’re an agent or an investor, the Black Sheep Convention is where you need to be to learn how to thrive in this environment.

Why Creative Financing Matters Now

In a market reminiscent of the stagflation of the late 1970s, the ability to present seller financing, wraps, and subject-to deals isn’t just an advantage; it’s essential. Most brokerages shy away from teaching their agents these strategies because they don’t understand them. At the Black Sheep Convention, we turn that on its head. We dive deep into real, tangible techniques to keep you ahead of the curve.

The Truth About Conventional Financing

Traditional loans are becoming increasingly difficult to secure. Banks tighten their lending standards, and homebuyers face skyrocketing rates. Waiting for “normal” to return? You’re wasting your time. Instead, you need to adapt and start thinking outside the box.

Using creative financing methods allows you to structure deals that others can’t even fathom. Need to sell a property quickly? Owner financing can give you the edge. Want to buy a property without tying up your own cash? Subject-to deals are your ticket.

What You’ll Learn at the Black Sheep Convention

This is not your average seminar where you’ll hear about theories and sales pitches. At the Black Sheep Convention, you’re getting hands-on training from 12 experienced operators in the field. With 10 classes over two days, you’ll walk away with actionable strategies that you can implement on Monday morning.

For just $399, you get all-access to in-person sessions, or you can join us online for just $99. It’s not just about education; it’s about execution. You’ll learn from those who are actually doing deals, not just talking about them.

Who Should Attend?

This event is for anyone serious about making waves in the Texas real estate scene—agents, investors, and even those looking to break into the market. If you’re willing to challenge the status quo and learn creative financing techniques, you belong with us.

Don’t Be a Follower—Be a Leader

While others are stuck in outdated methods, you have the chance to be the disruptor. By learning how to implement strategies like wraps and subject-to deals, you can create opportunities where others see obstacles. This isn’t just theory; it’s about real-world application.

Your Next Step

The real estate landscape is changing, and those who adapt will thrive. Don’t let fear or uncertainty hold you back. Join us at the Black Sheep Convention on September 25-26, 2026, at the Hilton San Antonio Hill Country. Secure your spot today and be part of the movement that is redefining Texas real estate.

Most people shopping for a real estate convention in San Antonio start with the wrong question. They ask “who’s speaking?” when the only question that matters is “who’s selling from the stage?”

Here’s how to run the math before you hand over your credit card.

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Step 1: Count the Sponsor Slots Before the Speaker Slots

The industry average for a large national real estate conference: roughly 60-70% of stage time belongs to sponsors. They funded the event. The mic is their ROI.

At Black Sheep Convention, sponsors support the event financially. That’s their lane. They do not get the stage. The 12 operators presenting on September 25-26 are there because they’ve closed deals, not because they bought a sponsorship.

The mistake that blows this step: Assuming “12 presenters” means 12 educators. Pull the agenda and count how many have something to sell from the stage versus a real deal to break down.

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Step 2: Calculate the CE Math Before You Decide

Texas real estate agents renew every two years and owe 18 hours of CE. Generic online platforms charge $10-20 per credit hour. You can knock out a full cycle for $180-360, in your pajamas, retaining almost none of it.

Black Sheep Convention delivers 10 CE hours over two days in San Antonio. Those hours are built around active investing strategies including subject-to, creative financing, and off-market acquisition. For agents who also invest, or investors who are also licensed, $399 covers both your required education and your business training at the same time.

The mistake that blows this step: Treating CE as a commodity. Ten hours at $15 a pop online is $150. But generic content delivered without deal context doesn’t change what you do on Tuesday. The math is about the application, not the clock hours.

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Step 3: Map Your 5 Sessions Before September 25

Five class periods. Two classes running at the same time in each. You will attend 5 of the 10 available sessions.

Small rooms with real operators is the design. That’s what makes real Q&A, real deal discussions, and no crowd-management theater possible. You can’t replicate that at scale.

What you can control: read the full schedule before you drive to the Hilton San Antonio Hill Country, decide which sessions match your current business stage, and commit to your five in advance. Agents will weigh that differently than full-time investors, and both decisions are legitimate.

The mistake that blows this step: Showing up undecided. When two sessions you care about run head-to-head and you haven’t thought about it, you’ll default to whichever room you find first. That’s a coin flip on a decision worth your full attention.

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Step 4: Budget the Real All-In Cost (It’s Smaller Than the Alternative)

• In-person, all-access: $399
• Live online: $99
• Dates: September 25-26, 2026
• Venue: Hilton San Antonio Hill Country

If you’re coming from Austin, Houston, or Dallas, add one night at the hotel or drive home the second evening. Book the event rate at the Hilton before it fills.

Compare that to the national guru circuit: $1,500-5,000 per ticket, airfare, hotel, and a $25,000 “mentorship” upsell from the stage before lunch. Black Sheep has no upsell from the stage. The $399 is the ceiling, not the opening bid.

The mistake that blows this step: Running the ticket price in isolation. Add travel and lodging in the same calculation. $399 plus $180 in a hotel room beats $1,500 with no homework every time.

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Step 5: Bring a Specific Deal, Not a General Question

The 12 operators at Black Sheep are in the rooms to work. Subject-to structures, seller financing conversations, off-market acquisition, wholesale deal flow: the people teaching those sessions have closed them in Texas markets within the last 12 months.

“We want this to be hands-on, something that people can literally take directly from your class and use in their business immediately.” That’s the standard every session is built to. Angie Rhea, who helps select presenters for the convention, set that bar explicitly.

The attendees who get the most out of it bring a real deal. A property under contract they can’t figure out how to structure. A seller who said yes but won’t commit. A number that doesn’t pencil at market financing.

The mistake that blows this step: Passive attendance. You’ll absorb the content either way. But the investor who comes in with a live deal walks out with a specific answer. That’s the gap between a good two days and a great one.

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September 25-26, 2026. Hilton San Antonio Hill Country, San Antonio, Texas. $399 in-person all-access. $99 live online.

Register at blacksheepconvention.com.

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Creative Financing Strategies for Investors and Agents
Texas Real Estate Continuing Education: What Actually Counts
How to Find Off-Market Properties in Texas
Full Convention Schedule and Class Tracks

The networking is not worth it. That’s the story the industry recycles because “I sat through six sales presentations and got sold a mastermind” doesn’t look great on a post-event recap.

Here’s the actual math: if you can’t name one specific deal structure, one usable contact, or one financing strategy you ran within 30 days of attending, you didn’t go to a conference. You went to a sales event with a nicer lanyard.

The Pitch-Fest Formula Has Barely Changed in 20 Years

The structure is consistent across nearly every major real estate conference in 2026. Low ticket price to fill seats. Real revenue comes from the stage: a $297 course, a $997 bootcamp, a $25,000 mastermind. Each speaker gets a time slot. Each slot comes with a close.

You probably knew this before you registered. You told yourself the networking would compensate. Some of those speakers are legitimate operators with genuine knowledge, but the economics of the model push every session toward teaser. Enough to believe the method works. Not enough to actually run it the following week.

In Texas, this format runs quarterly. Some of those events are fine. None of them are structured around you leaving with a working deal framework in your hand.

The Myth That Keeps Agents Out of the Room

The more costly version of this story targets people holding a Texas real estate license. The conventional message from most of the industry: investors and agents occupy separate lanes. Creative financing is legally complicated, potentially confusing to clients, best left alone.

That is backwards. When a motivated seller turns down your cash offer, a license means you can list the property instead of driving away empty. The supposed conflict between being licensed and working creative deals is mostly a myth kept alive by people who benefit from agents not understanding how these structures work. Agents who understand subject-to, seller financing, and off-market acquisition close more transactions, period.

The Black Sheep Convention is built for agents and investors in the same room, deliberately, because the deals that work in 2026 Texas real estate require both groups to understand the same mechanics.

Where the Conventional Wisdom Is Actually Right

Networking at conferences does produce real value, under one specific condition: the room has to be curated.

Two hundred active operators discussing real transactions is a fundamentally different environment from two thousand attendees who bought a ticket because a retargeting ad found them at the right moment. The conversation quality, the deal introductions, the referral relationships — all of that scales with the density of people who are actually in the game, not with headcount.

A single conversation with someone running subject-to acquisitions across San Antonio is worth more than a keynote from a speaker who sold out their portfolio three years ago and now earns income from speaking. This is not cynicism. People still closing deals have current information. People who used to close deals have stories.

What a Useful Real Estate Event Looks Like in 2026

Ten hours of Texas CE. Twelve operators. Five class periods with two concurrent tracks running simultaneously, so you choose content that fits your actual business instead of sitting through whatever the main stage scheduled.

No pitch from the podium. No back-of-room close. No invitation to a $20,000 mentorship program as your main takeaway.

Black Sheep Convention, September 25-26, 2026, Hilton San Antonio Hill Country.

$399 covers in-person all-access. $99 puts you in the live stream. Neither price is a foot in the door to a larger purchase.

If you’re licensed, the CE hours count toward your Texas renewal. If you’re an investor without a license, you’re in a room with agents who understand creative financing — which in practical terms means deal partners, listing agents who won’t panic when you mention seller financing, and people who know what the title companies in this market will and won’t close.

Who This Is For

Agents adding investor deal structures to what they already do. Investors who want to understand how licensed practitioners approach the same transactions. Texas real estate professionals who want CE hours from instructors actively closing deals in 2026, not instructors who closed deals in 2019 and built a curriculum around it.

If you want a production-crew keynote experience in a 3,000-person ballroom, this is not that. The Black Sheep room is sized for operators. The curriculum is built around deal structures you can replicate before the month is over.

Register at blacksheepconvention.com. September 25-26, San Antonio.

If you’ve walked out of a real estate event feeling hustled, the rational move is to never go back. That same rational move also costs you the room where actual deals happen. Here are the myths keeping serious Texas investors away from events worth their time, and the specific mechanisms that kill each one.

Myth 1: Every Real Estate Convention Ends With a Back-of-Room Close

This myth earned its staying power honestly. The guru circuit ran this play for twenty-plus years: cheap ticket, recognizable name on the flyer, three hours of real-enough content, then the lights dim and you’re being asked to hand over five figures for a “mastermind” before you can get to the door. Some of you have been in that room. Some of you paid.

The mechanism that makes it stick is that the content is legitimate. It works well enough that you stay. Then the close comes, and by then you’ve invested four hours and your sunk-cost brain does the arithmetic.

Black Sheep Convention runs on a different contract. Sponsors cover event costs. That’s their lane. The stage goes to operators with active deal flow, not to anyone selling a program. If the speaker can’t tell you which deal they closed in the last sixty days, they don’t get the mic.

Myth 2: You Can Watch the Recording and Get the Same Thing

The recording version of a class drops the best part.

When Dan takes a subject-to or wrap-structure class through San Antonio, then Houston, then Dallas live, each room changes it. An investor in Houston asks about a deal structure nobody in the San Antonio room considered. Someone in Dallas surfaces a pitfall that rewrites the risk section entirely. By the time the Hub recording drops, it’s been pressure-tested by three live rooms of people asking questions about their actual markets.

A recording is the answer. The live room is the answer getting stress-tested by operators facing the same conditions you face. The recording catches up eventually. You won’t be in it.

Myth 3: Real Estate Events Are for People Still Figuring Out the Basics

The assumption: once you’ve closed twenty deals, you already know the moves, so an event is just review.

The operators in the BSC room aren’t there to learn what subject-to means. They already run wraps. They’ve done seller financing deals. They’ve hit the wall on title seasoning. They’re there because the person sitting two rows over just worked through a specific variation of the deal you’re currently stuck on, and handled it in a way you hadn’t considered.

The stage teaches. The room fixes. Those aren’t the same thing. A Facebook group has a hundred people offering opinions. A room full of operators who close creative financing deals in Texas has people who have skin in exactly the same market you work. That gap in quality of conversation doesn’t close over Zoom.

Myth 4: The Best Content Costs Extra

Tiered events are the industry norm. General admission gets you the schedule. VIP gets the “real” sessions. The $5,000 backstage pass gets you the speaker’s personal number and a private breakfast where they say the same thing they said from the stage.

StepStone agents register at $249 versus the standard ~$400 general admission. Guests of agents can access the same price through a dedicated invite link. There’s no premium tier holding the advanced sessions for paying members. Everyone in the room gets the same operators, the same level of access, the same conversations. The only thing the upgrade changes is your hotel rate, which locks in before August 29.

On that note, one other thing worth repeating, from Angie, who organizes the convention: “Nobody ever regrets coming. We have tons of classes.” That’s what happens when the room is operators doing real deals rather than professionals doing real pitches.

Book the hotel before August 29. Come ready to work.

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The conventional mortgage market is stuck. Rates are sitting above 7% while sellers priced in a 3%-rate world. That gap is where creative financing lives, and if you’ve been waiting to learn it, the window is open.

Here’s how to structure an owner-finance or subject-to deal, step by step, with the numbers that matter at each stage and the specific mistake that kills it.

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Step 1: Run the Equity Filter Before You Call Anyone (40% Minimum)

The seller has to have skin in the game. For a clean subject-to, you need at least 40% equity in the property — ideally more. If they’re underwater or owe 90% of value, there’s nothing to structure around.

The number that matters: Pull the loan balance. Property worth $350,000, they owe $290,000 — that’s 83% LTV. Walk. They owe $180,000 — that’s 51% LTV. Now you have a conversation.

The mistake that blows it: Spending 45 minutes pitching creative financing to a seller with 8% equity who needs a cash-out refi, not a deal. You can’t help them. Know this before you dial.

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Step 2: Get the Actual Note Before You Negotiate Anything

On a subject-to, you’re taking over someone’s existing mortgage. You need the real terms in your hand — not what the seller thinks they are.

The number that matters: A 2021 loan at 3.125% on a $220,000 balance is $941/month in principal and interest. The comparable loan at today’s rates runs $1,598/month. That $657/month spread is your entire deal thesis. Confirm the rate and balance with a payoff statement before you build any offer. The lender sends it in writing within five business days on request.

The mistake that blows it: Negotiating off what the seller “remembers” their payment is. They almost always low-ball it. Get the actual statement.

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Step 3: Model the Spread (Payment vs. Market Rent)

The deal works only if you can rent or resell at a number that clears your carrying cost with margin left over.

The number that matters: You take over that $941/month PITI loan. Market rent on the same house in that zip is $1,750/month. That’s an $809/month gross spread before vacancy, management, and maintenance. Run 10% vacancy ($175), 8% management ($140), plus a $100/month maintenance escrow. Net: $394/month cash flow on a house you bought with paperwork.

The mistake that blows it: Forgetting that insurance and taxes are escrowed into some payments but not all. Verify line by line. A $3,600/year tax bill you missed turns a cash-flowing deal into a break-even.

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Step 4: Set the Balloon at 36 to 60 Months, Minimum

If you’re doing an owner-finance deal where the seller carries the note, the balloon term is the most underestimated negotiation in the room.

The number that matters: A buyer needs roughly 24 months of on-time payments to rebuild credit for a conventional refi, plus 3 to 6 months for the loan process itself. A 24-month balloon means you’ve baked in default risk. Set 48 months and you have a real shot at getting paid off clean.

The mistake that blows it: Letting a buyer push you into a 12-month balloon because “they’ll have financing by then.” They won’t. The 12-month balloon is the seller’s problem the day it pops — and 6 extra months of goodwill isn’t in writing.

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Step 5: Lien Position Is the Whole Game

This is not negotiable, and most people learn it the wrong way.

We had a student bring a deal from the Zilker area where the buyer wanted to put his own LLC in first lien position, with the seller carrying a second for most of her equity. Creative-looking deal. Actually a trap.

The number that matters: If the buyer’s LLC defaults on that first, the seller’s second gets wiped in foreclosure. She loses her equity regardless of what the promissory note says. She thought she was protected. She wasn’t.

The mistake that blows it: Letting any buyer-controlled entity hold first position while the seller carries subordinated debt. If the seller carries, she carries in first. A legitimate third-party lender can hold first — not the buyer’s LLC.

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Step 6: Third-Party Servicing Is Not Optional

Once the deal closes, somebody has to collect the payment, send statements, and file a 1098 at year end. That somebody is not you, and it’s not the seller.

The number that matters: A third-party loan servicer costs $35 to $75/month depending on the servicer and loan complexity. That fee gets built into the buyer’s payment. In return, you get a paper trail that holds up in court, a clean payment history for the buyer’s eventual refi, and a 1099 at tax time that keeps the IRS off everyone’s back.

The mistake that blows it: Self-servicing to save $50/month. When the buyer disputes a payment two years in, your Venmo history is not a mortgage statement. Use a real servicer — ACES, Madison Management, or a local land-contract servicer licensed in Texas.

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Texas is not the late 1970s, but the math rhymes closely enough: rates too high for conventional buyers, sellers priced for a market that’s gone, and terms being the only tool that actually closes deals. These six steps are built around real numbers because that’s the only way they work. The people running these deals at scale have the war stories to go with the math — which is exactly what we dig into at Black Sheep Convention.

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Myth 1: The Due-on-Sale Clause Will Blow Up Your Subject-To the Moment You Close

The clause is real. Every standard mortgage contract gives the lender the right to call the balance due when ownership transfers without their consent.

Exercising that right costs the lender money. They hire counsel, issue a demand, and accelerate a performing note. For a loan where payments are current, insurance is continuous, and the property hasn’t materially changed, there is no financial incentive to pull the trigger. There is no due-on-sale police. There is no due-on-sale jail.

Lenders watch payment performance. Keep the note current, maintain the lender as loss payee on the hazard policy, and service through a licensed third-party escrow company. The practical risk of receiving an acceleration letter on a performing asset drops close to zero. The clause is a contractual right, rarely exercised because exercising it only makes the lender whole on a loan they’d rather keep earning.

Structure the deal to minimize exposure regardless: professional escrow servicer, correct insurance, complete paper trail on every payment. But “the bank will call it immediately” is not how performing subject-to transactions actually play out.

Myth 2: Owner Financing Only Works When the Seller Owns the Property Free and Clear

This belief kills more potential deals than anything else in creative financing. The seller has an existing mortgage, so they can’t give the buyer clean title.

A wrap mortgage doesn’t require free-and-clear ownership. The seller creates an all-inclusive note (the wrap) that covers the underlying mortgage balance plus their equity spread. The buyer makes payments on the wrap. The seller services the underlying note out of that payment. The difference between the two is the seller’s return on equity.

Where this breaks down is lien position, and lien position is everything. A student brought us a deal on a Zilker lot where the proposed structure put the buyer’s own LLC in first lien position, with the seller carrying a second note for most of her equity. If the buyer’s LLC defaults on a senior obligation or takes out additional debt secured by that property, the seller’s second-position note gets wiped in foreclosure. She would have signed away most of her equity for a junior lien on a deal where the borrower controls the senior position.

Require a legitimate third-party lender in first position, or structure the wrap so the seller stays senior throughout. That’s the skill worth learning, and it’s the part nobody teaches.

Myth 3: Creative Financing Is a Tool for Distressed Sellers Nobody Else Will Touch

Facebook groups code creative financing as a distressed-seller play: pre-foreclosure lists, tired landlords, deferred maintenance, code violations. Those deals exist. Sellers in those situations do use it.

A seller with significant equity and no distress can use creative financing to beat conventional offers outright. We’re in a stagflation-type market where rate pressure is pricing buyers out of deals that would have closed easily at 5.5%. A seller willing to carry at 7% over 30 years, with 10% down, creates a monthly payment that works for buyers who can’t get bank approval right now. The seller earns more than most CD or treasury rates, holds a lien on a hard asset, and gets their price.

The late 1970s ran this exact playbook. When conventional rates hit 18%, a seller carrying at 10% wasn’t making a concession. They were the premium offer in the market. We’re not at 18%, but the mechanism is identical.

Terms are where the deal is made in rate-constrained markets. Sellers who understand that hold real leverage over every agent running a standard comp-and-list presentation.

Myth 4: Agents Skip Creative Financing Because It’s Too Complicated to Present

The more accurate explanation is that most brokerages haven’t trained anyone to present it. A standard listing package runs comparables, prices the home, and waits for a conventional pre-approval letter. Owner financing, wraps, and subject-to aren’t in the playbook the managing broker hands new agents. Most agents wouldn’t know what to say in that conversation with a seller.

In a slow market, that gap is something a listing agent can actually use. An agent who can structure a seller-carry note and walk a seller through lien position, note seasoning, and amortization is presenting options their competitors can’t. Sellers don’t typically know they can ask for this. An agent who brings it to the table creates deals nobody else in the room could close.

We train StepStone agents specifically on these tools because the gap is measurable and current market conditions reward it hard. When conventional offers dry up, the question is whether anyone on the listing side knows what to say.

Myth 5: You Can’t Wholesale a Property That Needs Creative Financing Terms

Standard wholesale logic: find the deal, get it under contract at a discount, assign to a cash buyer, collect the fee. If the deal requires seller financing, the cash buyer pool shrinks and the model breaks.

The cash buyer pool does shrink. You’re working a smaller group of investors who specifically want and understand creative structures, which is a narrower pool but not an empty one. Owner-financed wholesale assignments exist. You’re assigning a purchase agreement that includes financing terms rather than just a price.

What to verify before going to market: the contract is assignable (read yours before assuming), the seller is comfortable with who they’re ultimately carrying paper for (a different dynamic than a cash close with a stranger), and you understand the difference between assigning an executory contract and assigning a note. These are due diligence steps, not deal-killers.

If you learn the structures, the inventory of deals you can bring to an end buyer expands well past the cash-buyer box.

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