Everyone loves step-by-step guides. In this video, we have a 15 step process for tax sale investing!
Transcript:
Hi! Casey Denman here with TheTaxSaleAcademy.com. In this video, we’re talking about “Tax Sale Investing in 15 Steps.”
You know, I get a lot of people that want a step-by-step guide of a successful tax sale investment. That’s what I got for you today. Now, each one of these 15 steps, I can literally sit here and explain for hours and hours and hours. This is just a quick overview.
The first step: Determine your budget. How much money will you spend on your tax sale investments? You can start with very, very little money sometimes and become a very successful tax sale investor. It doesn’t require a whole lot of money, but you certainly do have to have some type of money or access to some money. So determine your budget.
Number 2: Determine where you’ll invest. I always like to suggest that you start investing locally. But if you live in a tax lien state or you just don’t want to invest locally, you need to determine which parts of the country or which counties you will consider investing in.
Number 3: Get the tax sale dates. And this is an important one. If the tax sale is about six or eight months away, that’s not that big of a deal. It gives you six or eight months to continue to learn about tax sale investing, to continue to research those areas and research the real estate markets in those areas. Now, likewise, if the tax sale is three days away, you need to give up on it. Just don’t try to rush yourself because you’re going to rush through all those research, you’re going to make mistakes, and you’re going to lose money.
Number 4 is to get the tax sale list. Call the county department responsible for the tax foreclosure in the areas that you’re interested in investing in and ask them for a tax sale list. Sometimes it’s available online, sometimes they’ll email it to you, they’ll fax it to you, or they might even have to regular snail mail it to you. But they will get you a list if you call and ask them for it.
Number 5: Research that tax sale list. When I talk about “research,” I’m also including we need to know what the value of the properties are that you’re interested in investing in. I could literally go on for dozens and dozens and dozens of hours about researching tax sale properties, and I do inside TheTaxSaleAcademy. And I can only tell you research is a huge, huge part of tax sale investing.
Number 6: Determine which properties from that list you want to invest in. Now on that tax sale list, there’s going to be lots of properties where you just don’t want to invest. It might be swampland, it might be a three foot wide strip of land. It might just be in bad parts of the county that you don’t want to venture into. So you need to determine which properties from that list you want to invest in.
Number 7: Prepare for the auction. Now this might sound simple, but it’s not. You need to have some way to reference the pieces of property that you’re interested in investing in. I always suggest printing out a spreadsheet completely separate from the actual tax sale list. You know, just putting a star by the ones on the tax sale list, you’re going to do nothing but confuse yourself. So print out a list on a spreadsheet of the properties that you’re interested in.
Along with that, you also need to have things like your ID, your pen, your paper. You know, pencils. Your lunch, if you want to. Water, sweater. So prepare yourself for the auction.
Number 8 is register to bid. And you know, along within that tax list, on the tax list, it will tell you when you need to register to bid. Sometimes that’s right before the auction. But on occasion, it might be two or three weeks prior to the auction. So you need to understand when you should register to bid, and then make sure you get there in time to register.
Number 9: Bid on the chosen properties. You’re going to have to sit there in the courthouse room or the auction room, wherever it’s at, and wait for the properties to come up, and then place your bid on these pieces of property. And actually bidding on the property is one of the easier parts of tax sale investing.
Number 10: Once you bid on the properties and win properties, pay for these properties. If you don’t pay for them, you’re probably going to be banned from future sales. Some auctions will have you pay for the properties right then or right there. Other auctions will give you 24 hours or 48 hours. Sometimes it will be up to five business days. So pay for the properties. And of course, you need to understand and listen to the rules when they explain them about how to pay for the properties and when to pay for the properties.
Number 11: Take care of any immediate needs after you have purchased the property. And if you’re buying a house, for instance, that has a door that has been kicked in, you need to go and secure that door. If there’s windows broken, secure those windows. If there’s tenants in there you want to evict, start taking care of that stuff right then and right there. The sooner you take care of that stuff after you purchase the property, more than likely, the better it’s going to be for you.
Number 12: Determine your objectives with the property. Is it a piece of property you’re going to quick flip? Which is selling it as fast as you can at a price well below market value. Is it a piece of property maybe you’re going to rent out? Maybe it’s a piece of property you’re going to dump a lot of money into to try to fix it up and get a premium on the property. Once you have kicked the people that live there out or once you’ve taken take of their immediate needs, you have to determine what your objectives are with that property.
Number 13: Advertise and market the property. And there are a lot of methods that we teach in the TaxSaleAcademy that are the more creative methods. The old-fashioned methods, yes, they do work. But I certainly recommend you learn the newer methods – you know, using technology to help advertise and market these properties – because you’re going to sell them a lot, lot faster.
Number 14: Sell the property. Go to closing if you’re going through a closing agent, or record the deed, accept the payment from the buyer. However you’re choosing to sell a piece of property, number 14 is simply sell that piece of property. And that’s when you’re going to cash in and make those profits.
Number 15: Repeat. Repeat everything in this list. The only way you’ll be able to be a successful tax sale investor is to invest in tax sale properties time and time again. The more properties you invest in, the more money you’ll make, the more properties you’ll be able to invest in in the future, and it’s just a large snowball effect. And the more you’ll build your wealth and the faster you’ll build your wealth; by taking the moneys from these properties and investing in more and more properties.
So there you have it; there’s 15 steps to tax sale investing. And like I said at the beginning of this video, I can literally sit here and explain each one of these steps for hours and hours.
And if you’d like more explanation and more details about these steps, I recommend you head over to TheTaxSaleAcademy.com, which you can do by clicking the blue link right here next to my head. And once you get there, download your free copy of my e-book, “The Tax Sale Investing Blueprint,” and we get into a lot more details about all these steps.
Have a great day, folks! Take care. Bye-bye.