There’s a common misconception that you need to be some sort of rocket scientist to access the “elusive tax sale list.” Fortunately, they are easily and readily available with little effort. Find out where to look in this video!
Transcript:
Hey, everybody! It’s Casey Denman here with TaxSaleAcademy.com. And in this video, we’re talking about how you can obtain those tax sale lists.
There’s a common misconception out there that you have to be some sort of expert to get a tax sale list, or you have to be licensed or you have to pay some sort of crazy fee to get these tax sale lists. And that’s just a load of garbage. Tax sale lists are very, very easy to obtain.
You have to look at it here from the county’s perspective. The county is foreclosing on these properties for failure to pay the property taxes. Now, when they sell these properties at tax sale auctions, it does two things. Not only does it bring in revenue with the actual sale of the property, but most importantly and the primary reason they do it, is so these properties are returned to the tax rolls as tax revenue income-producing properties which help them pay for their infrastructure and all sorts of other things that a lot of people take for granted. So, the last thing they want to do is make it secretive where they don’t ever sell these properties.
A lot of these counties, they aren’t marketing experts, they don’t have huge marketing budgets, so you aren’t going to see anything like crazy billboards or flyers passed all over town or anything like that, but they certainly aren’t going to withhold a tax sale list from you if you want to get one.
So, how do you obtain a tax sale list? The first and the most important step is determine the government entity responsible for the tax sales in the county that you’re interested in investing in. In some states, it’s the Treasurer. It could be the Clerk of the Court. It could be the Tax Collector. In some states, it’s actually the Sheriff’s Office that handles a lot of foreclosures.
So the first step here is to determine the office that is responsible for tax foreclosure in your area. Then simply go to Google. Okay? So if you’re looking in for Jones County, for instance, and it’s the Jones County Treasurer that handles it, google “Jones County Treasurer.” Go over to their website and it’s very likely they have a tax sale list right there on their website.
If they don’t, or if they don’t even have a website at all, just find their phone number. Give them a phone call. Ask them if they could possibly email you a tax sale list. If they can’t email you, ask them if they can fax it to you.
And believe it or not, I’ve actually had situations in the past where an office doesn’t have Internet access. And for whatever reason, they won’t fax me a list. They told me it was for long distance reasons. But what they did in this situation, they said, “Listen, Mr. Denman. We know you want a tax sale list, and unfortunately, we can’t get it to you because you’re many states away and all those stuff and you can’t come to our office. But, what we can do here is we can actually refer you to the newspaper. Our state statute, like many state statutes, do dictate that we have to advertise this property for sale in the newspaper. We have to advertise the tax foreclosure in the newspaper before we can actually take this to auction.”
So what they did in this situation, they said, “Here’s the person you can call at the newspaper.” They gave me their phone number. I called them. That person requested me to mail them a $1 check. I sent my $1 check. And then they sent me that edition of the newspaper that had the tax sale listings in it.
So when it comes to getting a tax sale list, it’s very, very easy. The difficult thing when it comes to tax sale investing is what you do with that list. How do you read that list? What properties do you choose to invest in? How much do you pay? How much do you sell them for? There are all sorts of other things that you’d really need to be concerned about.
As far as getting the list itself, it’s very, very easy. And anybody that tells you any different, you need to completely run from them because they don’t have any idea what they’re doing.
If you’d like more information about the more difficult stuff, head on over to my website, TaxSaleAcademy.com. You can do that by clicking the blue link right here by my head. And again, it will take you to TaxSaleAcademy.com. And while you’re there, download your free copy of the e-book, The Tax Sale Blueprint.
Have a great day, folks! Take care! Bye-bye.