MT1088 — NMB trail book

This is the opposite of BUY2700 — refreshingly simple. There's no company, no staff, no licence, no upfront engine. You're buying a pool of existing trail commissions on loans the broker has already written, and nothing else. The broker has retired from broking.

• ~$10.0M of loan balances across 28 client relationships / 31 active loans (37 loan splits), aggregated through National Mortgage Brokers (NMB).
• You acquire the right to receive the ongoing trail on those loans; it's assigned/novated to your own NMB agreement. Mainly Queensland clients, a couple interstate.
• Sold through Trail Book Buyers Pty Ltd as a tender — you submit an offer as a multiple of annualised trail, subject to contracts + DD. There is no fixed asking price.
• Client contact details are provided for handover — except one client the buyer must not contact (flagged in the profile). Their trail still transfers; you just can't approach them.

The statement is a loan-by-loan comparison of every active split at two snapshots, Aug-2025 vs Jul-2026. Summing the Jul-26 trail column gives $1,259.59/mo — which ties exactly to the headline monthly trail on the profile. The data is clean.

What you actually collect: $15,115/yr is inc-GST. Net of GST that's ≈ $13,741/yr of real income (GST is passed through to the ATO). The DCF above runs on the net figure; the offer multiple is struck on the gross, per Trail Book Buyers' convention.

Where BUY2700 was growing, MT1088 is winding down — a retired broker with no new business to offset natural amortisation, refinances and discharges. The headline decline actually understates the run-off, because it's cushioned by one brand-new loan:

A new $562k Teachers Mutual loan settled in Jul-2026 and added ~$37/mo of trail. Strip that one-off out and the underlying book ran off ~19–22% in the year. With the broker now retired, there's no engine to replace what discharges — so the calculator's base case sits at 16% runoff and the conservative case at 20%.

The structure is simple, so the risks are few but sharp — and they're almost all about run-off speed:

• Accelerating decline. −20% trail in a year, ~−22% underlying. If that rate holds (or worsens in a refi wave as fixed rates roll off), the annuity is shorter than the model's base case. Every extra point of runoff cuts the value — drag the slider to 20–24% and watch fair value fall.
• Refinance / churn with no defence. A retired broker isn't retaining clients. Any client who refinances away takes their trail with them, and you have no relationship to save it. The 6 loans that hit zero this year are the warning.
• Lender concentration. Westpac is ~31% of trail. A Westpac repricing or a couple of Westpac discharges moves the whole book.
• Assignment consent. The deal only works if NMB consents to novating the trail to you and you have (or can get) an NMB agreement. No consent, no deal. Confirm before spending time.
• Clawback tail. Trail clawback is rare, but the recently-settled loans (the Jul-26 $562k, the Mar-25 My State loans) are young — confirm no upfront-clawback liability rides along with the assignment.
• The one no-contact client + the admin fee. Minor, but real: you can't approach one client, and a 1.5-month (~$1,889) admin fee hits at settlement on top of price.

Two lenses, and they bracket the answer:

• Hold-and-collect (DCF). If you just bank the trail to run-off, at a demanding 18% target return and 16% runoff it's worth ~$39k (≈2.6× annual trail); even the conservative 22%/20% case is ~$31k (≈2.0×). Value is genuinely there if the decline is only ~16%.
• What the market pays. Passive micro trail-books actually clear at ~1.5–2.0× annualised (gross) trail, because buyers want their money back in 2–3 years, not ten. On $15,115/yr that's a $22.7k–$30.2k window.

Recommended stance: open around 1.5–1.6× (~$22.7k–$24.2k) and hold your line near 1.8× (~$27.2k). Given the ~20% decline, 2.0× ($30.2k) is the top — above that you're paying hold-value multiples for a book that's shrinking, with a ~$1,889 admin fee on top. Cheap in absolute dollars, so it can be a fine bolt-on — just don't let "it's only $30k" talk you past the multiple that the run-off justifies. Use the calculator to set your walk-away.

• NMB consent to assignment — the whole deal. Confirm NMB will novate the trail and that you hold (or can open) an NMB agreement to receive it.
• The full 12-month commission statement series, not just two snapshots — to see the real month-by-month run-off shape and any clawback deductions.
• Confirm the $1,259.59/mo is current and stable, and identify the one no-contact client and their share of trail.
• Why did the 6 discharged loans leave — refinanced elsewhere, sold, paid out? A pattern of refi-away signals faster future runoff.
• Confirm no upfront-clawback liability transfers with the recently-settled loans (Jul-26 $562k etc.).
• Confirm the admin fee (1 vs 1.5 months) and whether purchase price / assignment is GST-free (going concern).
• Client list quality: names, contact details, loan/lender data actually handed over at settlement.