Has anyone here bought a property at a tax sale where the opening bid is unpaid back taxes? or has bought property over the counter? how did it turn out? do you recommend doing them? any feedback would be greatly appreciative.
Chris
theres plenty of tax sales by all counties in all areas .
each state is diff.
check on the web for more info in your county clerks web site then go to some sales and get a feel for what is going on.
yes there are some great deals out there but like anything else you have to know what you are doing!!
Investor Bought an abandonded house in nice neighborhood for $11K that many investor’s passed at $16K at Sheriff’s sale. Total investment including $11k - $52K. Sold for $105. As with any transaction do homework-run numbers, check comps. This place was a diamond in the ruff. Yes, nice profits can be had from Tax/Sheriff’s sales.
I can’t say I bought one but was researching in my area quite a bit last year and plan to go this year. You can go to your county website and look for details or call your county treasurer and ask for details. It can be different from state to state or even county to county so doing research in the area where you want to buy is a good idea. Some areas are tax certificate, some are tax deed sales, some are both. If you are gonna sell the property, getting title insurance can be a problem so you may need to sell for cash, or file a quiet title. There is a company (in California I think) that will insure tax sale properties.
Hi Chris,
I have bought twice at a tax sale. One with a great outcome…one not so great.
The first auction we bought what we thought was a 2 unit and it ended up being a three unit. We bought it for min. bid (7,000). We put about 20,000. into it and it is currently rented out for 1295. per month. We owe a bank note of about 290.00 per month.
It just appraised for 88,000.
The second time I had investor fever and had nothing but good luck so far so I rushed into thinking I was invincible. We bought a potentially beautiful turn of the century home. It was condemed and we didn’t due our due diligence and we only had two months to start the changes. It was 3 hours across the state, i work full time plus 6 kids etc…WE luckily were able to sell it for 3,000 more than we bought it for but after closing costs etc. we lost about 1,000. It was kind of stressful. It would have been a gorgeous rehab but we couldn’t possibly do it within the time constraints. We even applied for and got an extension but what we really needed was a year!
I will defintely buy at auction again but I will stay in my own backyard until I can devote the proper time to learning different areas!
Hope that helped.
Hi Purdyinvestments,
I have been going to the tax sale in my county (here in Alabama) for the last five years.
Your state is probably completely different, but we only get a tax certificate which has a three-year redemption period at 12% interest.
At the end of the three years, we apply for the Tax Deed and that can take a few more months.
I got a tax certificate on a brand new vacant house worth about $200,000, for about $20,000 but one of the banks redeemed it about six months later. I did get the 12% interest but I wanted the house.
I have ended up getting the actual tax deed on some pretty good vacant lots in some rural areas.
The tax certificate actually gives us possession rights, even though we don’t have legal title. I don’t know how many other states are like this.
So some of the Section 8 investors like to bid on old abandoned properties because they usually don’t have much competition and can get them really cheap. They will do minimal fix up (the repair money is at risk if someone redeems) and rent them out immediately. They typically have all of their money back in about six months and usually no one redeems the junkers, but it is a risk.
Don’t know how much this helps sense you are in a different state.
Good Luck