Real Estate Deed Trolling, An Effective Strategy, PT 2

Continued From Part 1

This report will disclose any liens, mortgages or judgments as well as any owners or parties having a legal interest in the property. The file will also contain copies of those documents and deeds, notices to owners, correspondences between county offices, and more.

While weaving through the parcels to be auctioned and the tax deed files keep notes of legal descriptions, property identification numbers, lien and mortgage amounts and owners. You now have your real estate deed trolling list.

Number 2 thing to do for real estate deed trolling is to go to the Property Appraisers website. This is where the property data and the owners contact information can be found.

Follow this progression to locate property data and owner information for those properties found in the tax deed file. Google (Charlotte County Property Appraiser FL), see Property Appraiser Record Search- click it. On the next page see Search Real Property Records--click it. See the owner search option; enter in the name of the first owner found in one of the tax deed files. The returned list is a list of property owned by people in the county by that name. If those notes written down earlier contain the parcel id number, no problem, scroll down the list until the correct property record is located. If the property id number could not be located in a file but the legal description was found, open each record and look at the legal to match it up. When the matching record is found it will disclose: the contact information for the owners, the assessed value for the property, current zoning, features of property, tax bills, recent sales in area, where the property is located using GIS interactive aerial mapping, what comparable properties have sold for, and what the property owner paid for this property. In Charlotte County a separate query will have to run to locate the sales of nearby property, this search option is found under Records Search on their homepage.
You now have your real estate deed trolling data.

Number three thing to do for real estate deed trolling is to compare property value with notes taken from the tax deed file. Many of the properties on the list will be vacant land parcels, do these parcels have residential zoning 99% will. Are there liens and mortgages against the property that exceed your budget or the properties value? For most of the properties, the answer will be no. You now have your real estate deed trolling prospect list.

Number four thing to do for real estate deed trolling is to get connected to a motivated closing agent. This can take a little time but with the right agent a cash land deal can close in as little as 5 days. This is important, as there will still be the looming tax deed auction. If payment to the Tax Collector is not received in time your interest in the property will be severed.

Number five thing to do for real estate deed trolling is start trolling. Either send out flyers to the owners or run a search on whitepages.com to find a contact phone number. Once contacted the conversation is pretty straight forward.

We: purchase your land, pay all the closing costs, pay all the back taxes and have the property auction stopped so it will not affect you or your credit. If asked, do a brief explanation that if the property is sold at auction they will likely be sued to remove their names on the title to the property "quiet title action". A final judgment against them will be entered and may hurt their further ability to obtain credit or a mortgage or they may see increased interest rates on credit cards.

We have used the real estate deed trolling strategy to purchase properties for 20% of value and most of those are small buildable residential properties. These are the properties day dreamers overlook and builders don't waste time with.

Example: Property Value $8,000, pay owner $1,600, $300 in taxes owed and $400 in closing costs. So in the end there is a total of about $2,300 in property acquisition costs after which the property can be resold for say $6,000. With another $400 in closing and $300 in small carrying & ad costs that's about $3000 profit which can be made in as little as 20 days.

With confidence and repetition the necessity of having a closing agent for land purchases diminishes. The more deals completed the larger the snowball grows with less costs.

There are a few additional steps which should be taken to save you time, effort and reduce risk. Those steps can be found for free at http://www.floridataxsale-foreclosure-info.com/taxdeed_strategy_Florida.html