What We Buy

Tue. Mar. 19, 2024

What We Buy

Why sell to Cherokee?

Depending on who you are, you will have different reasons for using Cherokee to resolve your problems associated with non-performing assets. Different types of sellers have different priorities, so we list these issues for the various kinds of sellers we work with most often:


If you're checking us out generally, click here. You can download our brochures to your own computer, so that you can print them, save them, or share them with others.

Cherokee is an investor. We buy distressed non-performing assets from individuals and institutions.

The purpose of this page is to help you better understand what we buy, where we buy it, how we work, and how we can help you resolve your liquidity and legal problems.

The criteria we use when considering an investment, and how we work with brokers and intermediaries, is summarized on an information sheet called "Cherokee's Acquisition Criteria".

Notwithstanding the uncomplimentary connotation sometimes associated with the business of buying distressed debt, and the derogatory implication of some of these designations, the terms bottom fishing, vulture buyer, opportunity buyer etc are roughly interchangeable as they describe the business of acquiring and repairing damaged assets.

These terms generally refer to an investment strategy of looking for assets that can be acquired at a low price, and possibly offer excellent value. However the prospects for the assets are usually unknown, and frequently require a great deal of patience, vision, and additional investment to restore the asset and recover the latent value. Often these assets are shunned by the broad markets, and run contrary to what the markets are doing at that time.

Tax delinquent properties in urban neighborhoods, often abandoned and derelict, are the real estate equivalent of defaulted junk bonds or common stock of corporations in or near bankruptcy. Developing effective policies and processes to return distressed properties to productive use poses a significant short-term challenge, but successfully meeting these challenges offers the possibility of handsome profits for the investors, and a coup for government officials and community leaders who don't have to utilize scare taxpayer resources to achieve these community development goals.

To see our definition of non-performing, and a narration as to the various degrees of non-performance of the Assets we buy, please visit Non-Performing Assets.

For a summary of why sell to Cherokee, download Cherokee Sellers Brochure.pdf (PDF document), or go to our Overview of What We Buy page.

There are a hundreds of investors that buy real estate Notes and Mortgages. The asset may be called a note, trust deed, mortgage, land contract or deed of trust. They're all the basically the same thing, promissory notes secured by real estate. On this web site we refer to them as Mortgages or Security Instruments.

A major distinction between Cherokee and most mortgage buyers is that Cherokee only buys delinquent, and even charged-off mortgages. This is often called NPL for Non-Performing Loans. Most investors want loans that are making payments, or performing. They want nice, safe, well-secured mortgages. Their only point of differentiation is price, how low will you go?

Cherokee, conversely, helps you get rid of the bad stuff. Portfolios of mortgages that were wiped out in bankruptcies or tax foreclosures, or where the borrowers are currently in bankruptcy.

So if you have a Mortgage that is making payments on time, search the Internet and you'll find dozens of investors ready to buy it.

But if you own the opposite, Mortgages that appears to be worth little or nothing, or that are delinquent and will require a tremendous amount of work, and risk, attempting to enforce creditor rights, then you should call Cherokee.