Posts Tagged ‘Tax Lien Auctions’

Profiting From Tax Lien Certificate

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

Tax lien auctions create Excess Funds – that you can get for yourself!These Proceeds comes from foreclosures.These foreclosure sales can come from a substitute trustee foreclosure, a foreclosure from a home owner assoc, or a result of a county tax auction. If someone goes to foreclosure on real estate, they are collecting on a debt secured by the property, and are making a person or entity to sell their jproperty to pay that amount owed.The problem that occurs for the bank is that the home can get more than the debt that needs to get paid. For instance, say a bank forecloses on Joe Smith because he is way behind on his payment. Let’s say he has a mortgage for $200 Grandtwo hundred thousand dollars} to the mortgage company and that his home sells as a result of a foreclosure for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Where does the $ end up?The mortgage company – or usually the substitute trustee for the mortgage co – pays out the debt owed on the real estate, with the tax folks – meaning any unpaid property taxes get paid before others in line. After that the bank has a right to what’s left. But, the bank can’t keep any overage. Assume there were $5K in lawyer costs due to the foreclosure sale, &) there were still owed taxes to be paid to the tune of five thousand dollars.What we have is:$250K sales price-Five thousand $ taken out to pay the municipality for taxes owed.-Five thousand $ paid to the law firm running the foreclosure sale.-$200,000 paid out to the bank.There now surplus of forty thousand dollars.Who gets that?Good question:, in a perfect world, surplus funds is due to the person who was foreclosed on. Here’s the problem – the municipality where the foreclosure was filed does not have the timed needed, skills, nor staff to track down the owner of those funds. Also the mortgage company doesn’t have a reason to track down person owed either – their only focus is to prove that they don’t keep any overage from the foreclosure sale. As a result the surplus goes into an earnest $ account, referenced to the file residing in the county clerk’s files. There it will remain for a long time:for up to a decade, before it is transferred to the states escrow coffer.Listen Up! During the time the cash is deposited in an escrow account for the municipality and then for the state, it is make interest. The county and then the State can claim that interest due to the fact that they’re keeping it for the past owner. At this point the obvious question that hits people is–Does the person due can just call the State or hit the internet and claim the funds from the state – or from the county if its been a short time – Right?No sir. Most times the cash is out of the rightful owner’s name at the point where it becomes a part of the states escrow acct. Its found by a case number that references the foreclosure case file in the municipalitys courthouse. So inquiries directed to the state commonly go unanswered or hit a dead end due to the fact that the cash is not in the name of the person due.Then What you just drive to the clerks office, find the case file, & show youre id, correct? Too Easy.. First, identifying the file has it’s own unqique prob’s, becaues the records aren’t called, ‘woohoo – look here records’. In the rare event you miraculously get to the storage place of the records, you have to look through the files (one at a time to ascertain which of the files thatwhich actually have surplus funds in them. But, once you identify one such file, you can locate much more using a easy method.Now Assume you locate the records, and see big amounts of dough for the rightful owners. Can you pull out that cash?Not without a special form. At this writing, many States don’t let you get over a tiny slice of the money when you identify it, specially if you attempt to make a deal with the person owed for identifiying the surplus. They often call these folks as ‘finders’, and limit their commission to 10-15%, and some States also require a Private Investigator’s license to be allowed. Then is the chance gone at this pt?Nope. BUT you can get those surplus in your name, regardless:nevermind the person who should have it implementing a program called the ‘Gold Mine’ – go get it at http://www.surplusfundsriches.comThere are 2 additional considerations here…1. It doesn’t make any difference how long the surplus has been in the earnest money acct. There is overage dating back 40 years plus yrs – so it doesnt make any difference if property values have lately dropped- pull cash from files that came about when the real estate market was on the rise.2. The System also can be used for tax auctions.Tax lien sales are just foreclosures that are due togovernment going after:attempting to collect taxes due on a home and are foreclosing to get that debt. The differences in tax auctions are:1. There is a chance for a much larger cash amount. chew on that. Unpaid taxes of $20K on a home that has other debt and sells for 300 grand. Yes ma’am!2. There might be a ‘redemption period’ of a (few years where you are required to sell the home back to the ex-owneryour buy price plus improvements. You could lease the house, put a small amount of update money into it, and make that $ back, betting the owner does not come back in the middle of the redemption time. That works cuz you will recoup what you have in it, if the owner does come back, and return the rent. However, the Gold Mine Program teaches you a much better way to benefit from sales from a tax auction. You will literally, using the ebook, let the home to be auctioned at a tax auction, and then claim the surplus funds due to the rightful owner Yourself! Seriously! We trust this program cuz we designed it. Its available at http://www.surplusfundsriches.com

Realtor since 1993
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Tax Lien Certificates and Subsequent Tax Procedures

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

Tax lien auctions have gotten more and more competitive in recent years. Some factors that have led to this trend include: more awareness among small investors because of new courses on the market, more Wall Street money entering the market and the new trend of internet tax sales.

If you have been to the tax lien sale lately you may have noticed something interesting. The big dog investors are bidding the properties down to next to nothing. In Florida, it’s very common to see properties bid down to one quarter of one percent. Has your banker gone insane? Or do they know something that you don’t?

It’s probably a little of both, or they are probably playing the sub tax game. What’s the sub tax game? It’s very simple, really. In many states, the regulations allow tax lien investors to pay the taxes for the following years, also called subsequent taxes. In other states, the investor is actually even required to pay the sub taxes. Even more interesting, many states also have minimum penalty statues on the books that make investing there very attractive.

For example, in Florida, it is very common for the tax liens to be bid down all the way to one quarter of one percent. However, Florida also has a 5% penalty clause and an 18% normal interest rate. So, in Florida, the investor will often buy the lien at the quarter percent bid. If the lien redeems in three months, then he has made a 20% return. Worst case, the lien does not get paid for the whole year and the investor still makes 5%, which is a lot better than bank cd’s.

Then, the investor has the sub tax rule to make up the difference. He simply pays the following year’s taxes and is at the full 18% for the sub lien without any competition. Not only that, he is secured by high quality real estate. The two liens together will average well over 10%. So, the investor either gets a nice high rate of return, or he gets a nice Florida house.

Of course, that’s assuming that a hurricane doesn’t blow the house down. Heck, he is even covered there, because the tax lien investor gets first dibs on the insurance money, ahead of the homeowner and even the mortgage company. What a deal!

So, as you can see, subsequent taxes are an area of tax lien investing where you need to know the rules and learn to play the game. If you do it properly, then you can make some huge profits!

Carlos Scarpero is an experienced real estate investor who specializes in land. On his blog at http://www.scarpero.com/real_estate, he discusses innovative and creative real estate strategies to make your real estate investing more profitable.