All Forum Posts by: John Underwood

Hopefully he will offer something that will work out for the both of you.

Tell him you will take that boat in trade. It is worth some money.

Can you not move forward with foreclosure if you hold note and he is not paying?

Bill,

I have 14 (soon to be 17) tax deed houses that are rental properties.

In SC after property is not redeemed in 12 month, the county mails you the deed to the property no foreclosure no muss no fuss.

I hope to be able to retire from my job as an engineer in a couple more years of aquiring properties this way. I just wish I had none about this a long time ago.

John

I have bought tax liens for over 10 years in SC.

I wouldn't advise you sign up for a class.

I would recommend you buy some books off amazon, read all the free info on the web and here on bigger pockets.

A mentor in your area that you could buy lunch for could give you a crash course over lunch.

Go to an auction and observe the first year and get a feel for the auction and you should have no problem finding someone there that would be willing to help you out.

Steve, 

Larger counties bring in deep pockets and they buy up the higher dollar properties and all other that I have talked with only want the Interest.

Either go to smaller counties or do what I do and look at properties that have a FMV of under 75k. There are many great looking properties in my area that have made perfect rental properties in this price range. Also I avoid under 20k as this is usually junk.

This gets my list down to around 1000. Then I spend months driving by these house and I rank them from 1 to 10 so I can quickly look at my notes and ranking during the auction.

As to why someone wouldn't pay their taxes. There are so many reasons. Hard times, deceased, in a nursing home, this is not their primary residence and they are focusing on their primary house. Some people pay late every year and you see patterns of the same houses that are on the list. You can look up when each year they have been paying to see if this is normal or a new occurance. Some properties will have multiple years unpaid. These are more likely to not get redeemed.

I have been doing this for over 10 years and I still learn new things to look for.

Mike,

We own a Lake house that is on Lake Hartwell. We use Homeaway which is the parent company of VRBO. This site is awesome for communication with renters, accepting payments, refunding security deposits and maintaining an up to date calendar. We don't meet people at property. We use a lock box and I have WiFi thermostats that I can control temperature when no one is there.

If I moved further away I would just need to set up a cleaner and someone to maintain the yard and could still easily keep doing the property management.

Key is to get a good support staff in your area. Handyman/repair person, cleaning person and landscaper.

If you hired a local PM they would still be hiring these things out and still charging you about 10%.

You might be able to contact other vacation rental owners in your area and ask for recommendations on who they use for these tasks.

John

I just tried it for area code 29678. Current Homeaway.com Lake House.

It did not show any values, everything was blank.

John

Teesha,

Where in SC is the property?

John

Robert,

You should attend the local real estate club to jump start your networking and your education of real estate.

Upstate Creia. Google it we have a website.

We meet the 3rd Monday of every month at Embassy Suites in Greenville from 6 -9 PM.

John

I would recommend getting the delinquent tax list from the county you are I terested in. No list company is going have as detailed info as the county themselves. Some counties don't charge for list others do.

John