The Blalock story
The name is older than the strategy.
Blalock & Co began as a real estate company in Paragould, Arkansas, started by a man who had just come home from the war. The business has changed. What it's for hasn't.
Paragould, Arkansas
Home from the Second World War, Ruppert Blalock — town tax collector, cotton gin operator — opened Blalock & Co as a real estate company. In a town that size, that meant something. He lent, too: when neighbors needed carrying, he carried them, on a handshake and a ledger.
The second generation
Ruppert's son took over the company. The work was the same as it had always been in a small Arkansas town: know the property, know the family, and be the person still there when a neighbor needed time.
Indianapolis, and a different side of the table
Jake Blalock bought his first mortgage note. Not the house — the paper on it. Ten notes followed, across Indiana, West Virginia and Alabama, every one bought with family money before a dollar of anyone else's was asked for.
The handshake, with a model behind it
Jake manages data and analytics for a global healthcare company and holds an MBA in corporate finance. Statistical forecasting is his day job; it's also what a note portfolio needs and rarely gets at this size. The family instinct hasn't changed — keep people in their houses, be straight about the numbers. The tooling has.
Why this matters for your money. A family name three generations deep tells you about time horizon, not credit quality. We're building something to hold, not a fund to raise and move on from. This is a name we'd like to hand to somebody.
Then and now
Same business, different instrument.
A small-town operator lent to his neighbors and held the paper himself. Community banks did the same, until they sold the loans upstream and stopped knowing whose kitchen table the payment came from.
Our homeowners don't fit a bank's form. Many are contractors and tradespeople paid by the project — the income is real, it just doesn't document the way an underwriter wants. They pay a higher rate for the house, and they take very good care of it. We buy that paper and hold it the old way: knowing the property, knowing the payment record, answering the phone.
Blalock & Co · Note Investing