Newbie to a Tax Certificate Auction?
If you haven’t been to an auction before, you should absolutely attend one to get a feel for its action and pacing—a dry run before you actually start putting your own hard earned cash out. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a tax lien auction, just a well-attended public auction.
It's just an auction, why worry?
Auctions are purposely designed to get the best price possible for the seller (not the buyer). Although tax certificate auctions are not quite as high-pressured as other types of auctions (REO, automobiles, etc) they still have many things going for them:- A high, overall excitement level
- Your competitors sitting in the same room as you
- The marketing concept of ‘scarcity’ – limited time and availability of a product
- Large, corporate tax lien buyers looking to buy as much as they can
- Local, experienced investors looking for bargains not bought by the corporate buyers
- Newbies looking for one or two properties but largely shutout by the two characters above
Here are the steps I recommend to make your tax lien auction a success:
- Get the latest copy of the entire list of delinquent tax lien properties. You can find these lists with the county tax collector or subscribe to a listing service such as Tax Sale Resources (You can even use my discount code for 10% savings: 1833520034FL3cef207f )
- Bring the list with you and highlight the liens you are interested in and have done your due diligence on.
- Make sure the list is very legible and bring a couple pens to cross out liens that were removed just prior to the sale so you don’t lose your place when the auction starts.
- Read the rules of the auction carefully—know when you must register, what type of funds to they take, how the auction is handled, what order will the sale go?
- Attend the practice auction—most auctioneers will spend twenty minutes or so at the very beginning to show how he plans to go thru the properties.
Comments