Non-performing mortgage investment means acquiring loans on which the borrower has stopped making payments, typically at a discount to the unpaid balance, and then working to resolve them. Banks, credit unions, servicers, pension funds, private equity, and the federal government sell these loans to clear balance sheets and free capital; there is a difficult to penetrate secondary market where investors like First Lien Capital buy them and take over the resolution.

Resolution is where the value is created. Depending on the borrower and the property, that can mean a loan modification that keeps the family in the home or a landlord retaining his investment, a repayment plan, a short sale or deed-in-lieu, or, when nothing else works, foreclosure and disposition of the real estate. Bill Bymel has spent more than two decades in this market and built the First Lien companies around a simple idea: the best outcomes for the investor are usually the ones that also work for the borrower.