I’m in Texas too and witnessed two Sheriff’s tax sales. There is an minimum opening bid on each property to recover the taxes. As with any auction, the price only goes UP from there when there are competing bidders. There is no negotiating. If there are no bidders, the property is retained by the county to be auctioned off on another day or dealt with in some other manner (unknown to me).
-Bill
Appreciate the response Bill, but I actually had a different question then you answered.
After the property goes through a series of Auctions with no bids, eventually it gets placed on file with the county and just sits there for sale on their “resale” list.
Anyone can submit a bid on these properties at any time by mailing in an offer in a sealed envelope. They take the highest bid for a particular property at the end of a period, and once that bid is approved by council you then own that property.
This is all according to my counties web site…
My question is…Does anybody know if they will accept an offer for one of these properties for BELOW the minimum bid listed for the property?
If a property has been sitting on the resale list for 8 years with a minimum bid of $10K and the properties assesed value is $11K, I wonder if they would take a reasonable lowball offer for that particular property.
P.
the county is not going to accept anything less than what amount is owed to them in taxes.
besides, if you can obtain the property for just the back taxes, that is a great deal. Why the need to nickel and dime them, why not just pay the back taxes if you like the property?
Thanks for the response…
Because:
Some of the properties that I actually DO like owe more taxes then they are worth, so I was curious as to if they would ever deal on properties on a case by case.
Some of them are barely break even propositions.
Most of them are completely worthless pieces of property nobody would purchase and they will never get any tax money from in the future unless they give them away.
This is a resale auction list after all so most of these properties would have been purchased at auction if they had any value to them.
that’s right…
I do know the auctions are run by attys offices, maybe you
d be able to work something out with them if the prop had been there for some length of time…
I have never thought of investing in tax sales as, I dont know how much ti will be effective for me and how will be the returns and I need to study more in details so that I can be more assure.
yeah, the gurus hype it up a lot…however it has it’s advantages…
for example in Florida the counties will pay you a max of 18% a year return… however at the sales (which have recently changes to online auctions) you can usually lock in at around 12-14% - if the prop. owner comes in and pays anytime within first 3 months you get like 5%, and then you earn about 1-1/4 - 1-1/2 every month it stays delinquent…
then if it goes the full year, you just pay the 2nd year taxes and start over again earning more interest…then if it goes 2 years you file to have prop. turned over to clerk of court and they hold deed sale and sell prop…**the deed sales is where the more serious monies are to be made…I’ve known people who have bought props. worth $140,000, bought them for $8,000 and then sold for like $60,000 (far and few between these days)
but look at what the banks are paying this week…what, 1, maybe 2%…who would even bother…
so tax sales takes a little time to learn the in’s and outs…but once you know how to buy them, and you buy them with monies you don’t currently need to spend…and you understand this is an investment and not a get rich scheme…you could be earning 10x or more what any bank will pay you…and who knows, you may just be one of the 1% investors who ends up with a prop. for just the back taxes… World Series Kirk Gibson Homerun!