The property that never was.

I found a glitch in the matrix today.  A property in a black hole, certain to be on no-one's marketing list.  Not found on a list of out-of-state owners, not on vacant homes, not on equity owners, not on probate.  Although this home secretly meets the criteria of all those.

Searching the monthly tax deed auctions, I saw what I suspected was another random unwanted vacant parcel going to auction, very common as we have a lot of rural land in the outskirts of my county.  It had both back-taxes and assessed value of  <10k, yawn. The auction didn't have an address, like most of the other land parcels.  For some reason I searched anyway, and clicked the link to the property appraiser's site.

The property appraiser had no address on record...  Let me clarify.  It had an owner, an owner mailing address, but no property address.  This place didn't exist on paper!  Taxes were practically nothing, and there was no structure associated with the property.  But county records did have a warrantee deed when you searched the owner's name.  Aha!


Google streetview shows it to be an pretty nice home, in a great part of the town! Definitely not something a smart homeowner should allow to be sold at tax auction for 7.8k, or allow tax cert holders to earn 18% interest on. But nobody would find this out unless they search several layers deep.  Estate transfer to heirs in 2006, and the owner lives in Hawaii. Since taxes are going unpaid, I assume its free and clear without a mortgage.  County records verified this for me.

I'll market to this owner via a pre-templated mail campaign before the auction. "Hey I see your property is going to auction! Let me give you cash and buy it." Also, The owner isn't motivated enough to pay his taxes for years, I assume he'd be open to an owner finance earning cash flow every month.  An interesting deal that hopefully turns out to be profitable!