Howdy SD Newbie:
There is not a whole lot to learn at the court house or tax office. You can get the size, age, tax value, how long current owner has owned, even this cound not be correct if sold recently. You could look up ther deed records to see who they bought it from and get a copy of all the loan documents. You can go back futher and even to when the subdivision was platted and get a copy of the plat map. You can check for any liens or judgements against the owner such as IRS or such. You could spend a few hours looking over all the data about that property.
By learing about past due taxes and judgements you will get an idea of how motivated the seller is. A lot of this info is online too making life a lot easier. I will get the prelimary info just to get the facts. If I think the asking price is a bargain to start with I will look up online the above info. The last house I bought for instance I knew the size 1800 sq ft, taxes $2100, appraised value of $112,000 and the asking price of $29,900. I knew it was a REO and the seller was Greentree Financial and I knew they had loaned $120,000 to the previous owner. I knew something was wrong with the house because of the low price. I bought it for $24,000 and am spending $55,000 in a major overhaul plus the HML fees and points etc. I should net $35,000 profit hopefully. I later learned that the seller also had to pay $14,000 in back taxes to sell me the property. I did not care what the taxes were before I made the offer.
To come to a boil here, a lot of the info is useless but a lot is great to know. You can find more than you need to know especially if the asking price is too high to start with.
Hope some of this helps
