Has anyone purchased from Sacramento county tax lien auction?

Question

Has anyone purchased from the Sacramento county tax lien auction?  It's coming up here in a couple of weeks and my wife and I have some money saved up and a couple properties in mind.  My main concern is having enough money.  The starting bid for some of the properties are between $15k-$20k, how high do they get bid up? Would it be a waste of time trying to buy with only $30k?

Mark Pedroza · Answer

Notice of Petition to Administer Estate will have to filed.

After that Petition  for Probate, Order for Probate and Letters of Administration (if no will) are court-mandated documents that the PR will also petition the court for.

These three documents legally transfer the estate property.

Jay Hinrichs · Answer

@Derek Jones  is bid 4 assets handling the sale ?  I know many CA counties have gone to them.

Make sure you check with title companies that will insure post sale. you could be surprised by the answer.

PRE sale is the way to go  @Gordon Cuffe  generally and its a drive for dollar play at least the guys I fund across the country that's how they get their deals.. reason letters are not that great is you have a finite amount in a state like CA going to sale.. its not like tax cert states were hundreds if not thousands of properties are up for sale..  so the people losing them are bombarded with letters much more so than normal non situs type letters.

Jay Hinrichs · Answer

Account Closed  tax sale properties  and its tax deeds NOT tax liens in CA by law must be published in the legal section of the paper in the county were the property is.. so its as easy as buying the newspaper.. in big counties like Sac that will generally be the legal publication.. if you don't know what that is ask around.  or simply call the county tax collector many times they have the list either on line or one that yhou can purchase.

then its just driving for dollars.

this is not the mid west or Rust belt.. you will have a very limited supply of homes.. but a bunch of odds and ends lots and land that have little to no value.. Ergo sending letters is pretty much a waste of time if there are only 10 house's on the sale in a country of one million people think of all the letters these folks get.

Account Closed · Answer

@Jay Hinrichs

Great insight. You say that the drive for dollar play yields the majority of tax lien properties in your experience... is this just information that the investors driving around have come across after doing their normal drive prospecting, or are they looking for some specific identifiers for a tax lien property when they're hitting the streets? Is there a way to suspect a property has this issue by observation only? Can you get lists of properties with tax liens on them from an agency (county assessor/title co?).

These may seem like dumb questions, but hell.

Karen Montez · Answer

We are in a rental property here in Sacramento. The owner has passed, and the daughter has not opened probate, for unknown reasons, and she's not paying the property taxes. I believe the property is going to auction in February 2019. We owned this house at one time, but, it was stolen from us through fraud. Long story. This was supposed to be our forever home. We don't, or have the ability to move. We are elderly. We have been renting this house for three years, for slightly higher than what our mortgage was. We take care of it, as if we still own it, and are very punctural with the rent. Is there someone who is looking for a real bargain, and someone with a kind heart, to consider bidding? The unpaid taxes are under $18,000.00.

Gordon Cuffe · Answer

@Derek JonesI went to tax lien sale for Sacramento two years ago. It was very crowded. The properties get sold. You just need to do you homework first. The problem with auctions are that people get excited and bid the property up too high sometimes. I want to contact these homeowners before the auction starts but I do not get a high response rate with letters.

Derek Daun · Answer

I haven't gone to the auctions myself, but I have followed a handful of auction based deals over the years.

In 2011, 30k could have gotten you some great deals. I can't imagine those deals existing in 2016 though. I would assume that any property going for 30k would be in the shape that it would require at least that much additional money in rehab (probably a lot more). Maybe I'm wrong though.

30k does give you enough money to buy a 150k property at 20% down. Those deals do still exist around here.

Has anyone purchased from Sacramento county tax lien auction?

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