Selling an Owner-Financed Note in West Texas and the Permian Basin

A note buyer who actually lives out here

Booth Group is based in Midland. That's not a marketing line, it's the reason this page exists. Most companies advertising to buy Texas notes are working from a screen somewhere else, and when a file comes across involving a 20-acre tract off a county road in Martin County, they're guessing. We're not guessing, because it's the county next door.

If you sold property in West Texas or the Permian Basin with owner financing and you're holding the note, this page is about what makes that paper different and how it gets looked at.

The counties we work

Midland, Ector, Martin, Howard, Glasscock, Andrews, Gaines, Crane, Upton, Reagan, Ward, Winkler, Reeves, Pecos, and the surrounding rural counties. We also look at notes across the rest of West Texas and into southeastern New Mexico. If your property is somewhere in that footprint, the odds are good we know the area, the roads, and how the local appraisal district treats land like yours.

What West Texas owner financing usually looks like

The paper out here skews differently than it does in a metro. What we see most:

• Raw and undeveloped tracts. Five to a few hundred acres, often sold off a larger parcel, frequently with no improvements and no utilities run.
• Ranchettes and rural homesites. A tract with a manufactured home or a modest build, sold to a buyer who couldn't get conventional financing on it.
• Recreational and hunting land. Sold in pieces by an owner who subdivided, usually with a small down payment and a long term.
• Small-balance second liens and wraps, where an existing loan sits underneath the note you're holding.

Most of these were papered as a promissory note with a recorded deed of trust, which is the structure that sells cleanly. Some were papered as a contract for deed, which is a different conversation and covered in Contract for Deed vs. Deed of Trust in Texas.

Why West Texas land takes real underwriting

Two things about this region change how a note gets reviewed, and a buyer who doesn't know the area gets both wrong.

Appraisal district values are weak evidence on raw dirt. County appraisal districts do a reasonable job on houses in town. On undeveloped acreage, especially anything carrying an agricultural valuation, the assessed number can sit far away from what the tract would actually bring in a sale, in either direction. Anyone pricing your note off a CAD screenshot alone is doing arithmetic, not underwriting. The things that actually move value on a West Texas tract are access (deeded, or a handshake easement nobody recorded), whether there's water and what it costs to get it, power distance, fencing, topography, and what comparable tracts nearby have genuinely traded for.

The regional economy runs in cycles. Oilfield activity affects employment out here, and employment affects whether a payer keeps paying. That cuts both ways and it isn't a reason to discount a good note. It is a reason a payment history through a soft patch is worth a great deal in a review. A payer who kept paying through a downturn has told you something no credit score captures.

The surface-versus-minerals question

This comes up constantly in the Permian and it's worth being precise about. Owner-financed sales out here are usually surface conveyances, and mineral rights have often been severed years or decades earlier, sometimes long before your seller ever owned the place. A note secured by the surface estate is normal and perfectly financeable.

What matters is that the deed of trust and the recorded legal description say clearly what the collateral is. If minerals were reserved, retained, or conveyed separately, that should be visible in the recorded documents. It's one of the first things a careful review checks in this region, and it's a common source of confusion when a note holder assumes they sold something they didn't, or kept something they didn't.

What to have ready

The same file any note review needs: the note, the recorded deed of trust, the payment record, the current balance, and what you know about property taxes on the tract. Property taxes deserve a specific mention here, because unescrowed rural land is where delinquencies quietly accumulate. If you know there's a tax issue, say so up front. A known problem prices better than a discovered one. The full document list and process is in How to Sell a Mortgage Note in Texas.

Getting a look at it

Booth Group LLC buys West Texas and Permian Basin notes directly, with our own funds, whole or in part. You'll be talking with the principal who reviews the file, not a call center that will shop it around. Request a free, no-obligation estimate and tell us where the property is. Anything we discuss is preliminary, non-binding, and subject to reviewing your documents and title.