Tax Sales and the Internet
68The internet offers wonderful opportunities to participate in tax sales with out having to leave home.
- The number of internet sales is increasing every year. There are between 300 and 400 sales that are now on the internet and they tend to be the larger sales. For example, Cook County, Illinois is now an internet sale - this is a sale that used to take as long as 40 days to do as a sale you attended in person.
- Some of the states that now have at least some internet sales include: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Florida, and Maryland. I am sure we will see a number of new sales and states being added to this list over the next year.
- Most of the internet sales require you to register some time (one to three weeks) before you can enter bids for the sale. You are usually required to deposit a nominal amount of funds prior to the sale and payment is usually required within one to three weeks after the sale.
You also have the capability to do some, if not all, of your due diligence on the internet. The increase in internet tools for this task has been dramatic over the past two years. We have put links to a number of very good sources at the bottom of this page, but some of the names are:
- Google Earth
- SearchSystems
- Zillow
- TaxSaleLists
- NACO
- Domania
These sites allow you to get the tax sale lists (TaxSaleLists.Com), find the assessor websites quickly (SearchSystems.net), actually view the properties (Zillow for residential and Google Earth for the rest), or get the links to the counties (NACO.org).
What this means is that you no longer have to go to the specific area, rent a motel room or hotel room and a rental car and spend a great deal of time and money doing proper due diligence.
Whatever you do, don't believe some of the "gurus" out there who tell you you don't have to worry about any of the above, that "after all, you are just paying the taxes, how can you go wrong?". If you do not have a pretty good idea about what you are buying then you can definitely go wrong.
If you do your homework you will make money from tax sales and the internet.
Have a great day.
CommentsLoading...
Teresa - good question, but since you will end up buying a property at a lien sale, in most states, at somewhere between 3% and 20% of market value, you will have little problem selling it at 75% to 90% of market value.
I have had very good luck selling to those who re-hab properties and doing "rent to own"
Your progam tmpresses me as being honest,help-oriented,and knowledgeable.
How do you actually start doing this tAx Lien business?
Very helpful. But I still feel uncomfortable about not having a real set of eyes to look at the property. Pictures, or descriptions can be deceiving.
That's what I was interested in - how I could do tax sales and due diligence on the internet. Thanks for that great information.
Thanks for the great article. I look forward to working in the tax sales area, but first I need some money to invest -- so I hooked up with Sisel International. Please check out my websites at http://www.MySisel.com/BAM39 and http://YourFutureInYourHands.com for good information and a variety of articles. Please let me know of your successes in tax liens.
I love the way you explane the tax lean business, I have a couple of questions.
1) when you look at the picture just how old is this picture 6 month could make a big differance
2) do you go through the first sale with us? or do we just look at the process.
Thanks Tim from Canada
I'm from Canada and would like to invest in tax liens as well. I am forming an mastermind group. If anyone is interested in joining, let me know at gman2002@hotmail.com.
The focus of this mastermind group is US tax lien investing.
Look forward to hearing from interested individuals.
Best regards,
Ian from Canada.
A wealth of great sites that you have cited ! Thanks for the info !
Like it!
One problem with internet information is that it can often be greatly out of date. When I look at my property on Zillow, as an example, it still shows my vans that I got red of in 2007 (one in the driveway and one in front of the house in the street). This can be very important because, as an example, one house that was recently auctioned off that I looked at had a large tree in the back yard that had broken and fallen on the neighbor's house causing a great amount of damage to its roof, etc. The person who bought that house may have been responsible for the cost of repairs to the other house along with the cost to cut the tree down, etc. Also the pictures that are posted on Zillow, etc. are more likely to show the positive aspects of the property and not show the negative aspects such as basement wall and foundation problems, so you will not see these unless you actually go to the site or have someone else go for you.
ones i get the chance to buy the property let say for example at 15% equity of 100,00 market value. What hapens if I dont have the money will I still get pay for the interest and the property will go to the next bidder.
I’m just passing through looking specifically for information on web technologies, since I have questions or rather information I need to sourced; excellent hub page however, very comprehensive and intuitive.
I like to by list tax dead of Florida
Is there more to due diligence besides going out to see the property for myself? What about avoiding any pitfalls?
To Marti Norberg: Your site does not exist anymore. I tried pulling it up but could not.
I am most interested in where you found money to invest.
Please contact me. ibuyequity@bellsouth.net
I also would like to know where to get money to invest.
i liked the information. where can I find the money to pay for these properties as an investment. I would like to buy all the properties via the internet.
Some great tax sale internet sources
- The best source for finding out when sales are held and getting the lists
This is the only site that posts tax sale lists from across the country. Last year they posted over 10,000 lists totaling more than 2.7 million properties. This is a definite must. - An Introduction to Tax Sales
This is a free one hour webinar about tax sales and how they work. They do attempt to sell you their 15 hour training program (which is one of the good ones and reasonably priced) The hour is filled with a lot of facts and 5 minutes of sales pitch. - SearchSystems.net - The Largest Public Records Directory
SearchSystems.net is the internet's largest directory of public records databases. A must for finding assessor, treasurer and other sites where you can get property information on the tax sale properties. - A great way to see pictures of the houses on tax sales
Zillow is a must and gives you photographs of properties that are on tax sales. It only has residential property though. - Google Earth
Here is the download for Google Earth, they will give you aerial views and in a lot of places, street level views of both residential and commercial property. It is free and a great site. - NACo | County Resource Center
The National Association of Counties has links to county web sites (Search Systems is better for assessor sites) but they also have direct links to census information on the county which is a great way to become familiar with the area of interest.
Teresa 2 years ago
Your article is great! How coud one make money buying and reselling the Popert y in this time that the economy supposedly is bad? How about you cannot re-sell the property? One ends loosing money.