All Forum Posts by: Jerry K.

@Yvette Hirsch You need to talk to a Tax Foreclosure attorney. This is not something you want free advice from a forum of investors. Sorry for your current bad attorney situation, but you need an attorney who specializes in tax foreclosures in your state.

@Anthony Favoroso I do some screen scraping and also use outsourcers to screen scrape and get various data from county websites. There are other ways to get lists of properties that have tax liens/certificates sold on them.  They are from commercial providers and cost a little money, but they can save you time.

Take a look at @Seth Williams website. He has videos on how he gathers lists for land flipping.

I have been doing a tax lien list project for just one county and I have over 250 hours into it. It can get crazy trying to find the data you need and then scripting imacros to get it. In this one county I have to get data from the Assessor office, Treasurer office and Recorder of Deeds - and each office uses a different variation of the Parcel number to get the records.  I have to spend a lot of time reformatting just the Parcel numbers to use as inputs for the scripts.

@Anna Watkins Thanks for sharing.  As @Tom Yung mentioned, the statutes/rules for all the states/counties are crazy to learn. I've looked at TN briefly in the past and I didn't dig deep enough to see how the bids are applied to the other outstanding taxes. Franklin is such a growing county - I know many people who are planning their escape from Illinois financial and political mess and Tims Ford Lake area is popular for housing value and better weather than northern IL.

When the time comes and you're past the redemption period on your lot, offer it to the property owners next door and other owners on the street.  You'll probably find a buyer quickly on your own that way.

@Brian Larson Rural N. AZ cousins - I like that phrase! I would like to get out of Illinois before the whole state has the power turned off and locks changed. They may actually be able to pay off the state government deficits by putting a tax on the people moving out of the state! 

Would love to live in the Sedona area or the more affordable (and more services in the area) Cottonwood. Need to make a living as my boys finish college in the next few years so it's Illinois for now.

Kyle reached out to me a few weeks ago about my liens on vacant residential lots in Yavapai and Coconino counties. If I end up with any of the land we may be able to do a deal or two down the road.

@Brian Larson Sorry to see this flip is not up to par. Is it worth looking at changing the layout? Or are the numbers just not there and better to take the loss and move on?

Avoid funky layouts in the future or will you build cost of fixing layout into the purchase price if a weird floor plan comes up again.  What is the inventory of affordable flips like in the area?

@Brian Larson Just getting caught up with this thread myself. Good to see you sold. What were some of the interesting offers and what did you learn about the area in terms of buyers? Congrats!

I, like most others, would include everybody who has answered a question for me directly, everyone who has answered a question for me I didn't even know I wanted to ask (I have a solo 401k account that before BP I didn't know was an option, so I guess thank you @Joshua Dorkin) and especially thank you to the people who correct my own wrong answers.

That said here are q few groups of people that deserve an @ttaboy;

Since I'm mainly in Tax liens (and deeds), my "go to experts";

@Ned Carey

@Tom Yung

@Wayne Brooks

@Richard D.

People who introduced me to other investors to answer questions include the "Chicago connections" of  @Brie Schmidt, @Zach Shepard, @Derek Martin, @Wendell De Guzman

I would be remiss if I didn't mention how awesome @Steven Hamilton II is for answering accounting/tax questions with the appropriate caveats a licensed professional needs to include.

And those who write great blogs on topics that catch my attention with their complete openness on deals; @Dawn Anastasi, @Seth Williams,  on deals@Shaun Reilly

And I'm humbled by those reach out with a colleague request based on a forum answer or blog post I've written.

Oh yeah, as a comedy writer myself (I know not much of what I do on BP is comedy except for my wrong answers) I am always impressed with a funny post. So @Natalie Kolodij there is a colleague request coming your way because you're posts in this thread alone are fantastic!
@Shaun Reilly

@Crystal Chang Good question.  I have never seen that type of parcel end up being foreclosed. There is no reason an investor who bought the lien by accident would ever pay for foreclosing on it once they found out the property was actually in the lake itself. Most likely the parcel ends up being owned by the county.

@Crystal Chang What follows is based on my experience alone.  I don't know the program you are speaking about so I have no opinion on what they offer.

In most counties you can buy the "leftover" tax liens after the auction.  These are the liens that nobody wanted to buy during the auction period.  In an online auction you can bid on any of the liens at any time.  So the the liens nobody wanted to touch are left.  You get the maximum 18% annual interest on those liens. Calculated at 1.5% per month - so if the owner pays off after 4 months you get 1.5% x 4 = 6%.

Are there decent underlying properties in the leftover liens?  Yes, but they are tough to find. Usually they are properties worth less than what it would take to pay off all remaining city liens, costs to bring to foreclosure and prior real estate tax liens that may be on the property.

It's tough to "reinvest" when the auction is held only once a year and the leftover liens are picked through.  It can be done and investors are doing it, but they have systems in place to find the gems that are left and they do a lot of research to find and keep track of them across many counties.

Not sure where 24% interest comes into play in Florida.  Other states have higher rates, or maybe they buy Florida certificates at a discount from other investors.

@Wayne Brooks can speak to the quality of most of the underlying properties in the leftover status. I've seen parcels that the county website shows the lot lines overlayed on Google Maps and the parcel is literally in the middle of a lake. But I have also seen a gem or two - after several hours of research.

Counties that use an open outcry auction instead of online can bring a little higher rates overall since the number of bidders are limited and they may not get to all the liens in the auction period.  In that case, the leftover liens can be very good.  But you will be doing all research on-site at  the county offices, and not from home.

@Stephanie Fay

Which county are you looking at investing?  I have a handful of counties in Florida with auction results.  

You might find this chain of posts in the forum interesting.  There are a series of images from spreadsheet analysis I did of the results of Palm Beach County in FL. I broke out each lien that was sold, by winning bidder and then also added in property type to help show which types of property received higher rates of interest. Here is the thread http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/70/topics/9919...

If your ultimate goal is to get the underlying property, then go straight to the tax deed auctions like @Wayne Brooks mentioned.

Here are some county websites that offer them:

http://www.realauction.com/online-property-auction...

http://www.grantstreet.com/auctions/foreclosure-ta...