I’ve seen thousands and thousands of homes at tax sale auctions and a good portion of these have either a condemnation order or a demolition order. What does this mean to you as the tax sale investor? Find out in this video.

Hi! Casey Denman here witheTaxSaleAcademy.com. In this video, we’re talking about Condemnation and Demolition Orders; two very serious things that you need to be made aware of.

Oftentimes, you can look at a piece of property and look at a house and it doesn’t appear there’s anything wrong with it from your viewpoint. Maybe you see it on Google Street View or Aerial View or perhaps you even drive by the property. But unless you check further, there can be some very serious issues.

First of all, let’s talk about Condemnation Orders. The Condemnation Order is a determination by a governing board or an official that a property is no longer safe to occupy, or in a lot of cases, even safe to enter. Basically, if the structure is collapsing, if the roof is falling down, if there could be like a sinkhole nearby, for instance, that the property could fall into at any moment. If it’s a fire-damaged structure or if it’s a piece of property that’s just been flooded and it’s covered in nasty, black mold, these are all reasons for some sort of condemnation order. And again, this means that it’s not safe to occupy or enter.

And basically, how to fix these is you just go in and then you take care of the issue. If the roof is collapsing, you fix the roof. If it’s covered in mold, you remove the mold. If it’s fire-damaged or there’s some sort of other issues with wall structures or whatnot, you go and you fix those issues. If it’s the sinkhole nearby, that is one of the issues that just might take time. If the sinkhole doesn’t have any activity after a year, then you could go and have the official come back out there and see if they can remove the condemnation order.

These are very serious things that can definitely hurt your investment basically because you can’t sell that property to somebody unless you tell them about the order against the property because they can’t live there, they can’t enter the property. There are a lot of things they can’t do, so of course it’s going to kill your value. So these things must be fixed.

The second thing that we’re talking about today is a Demolition Order. It’s kind of similar to a Condemnation Order and it’s usually handed down by the similar board or the similar official in the county that’s responsible for this kind of stuff, but it’s definitely more serious. This is an order handed down that says this structure, it must be destroyed. It has to be demolished. There’s no fixing it. There’s no turning back. The property is beyond repair and it must be demolished because it is a safety issue to the public. It could fall down on somebody. Somebody could get in the property and they could die because of your structure might collapse on top of them.

Basically, it’s saying that your piece of property or this house has some serious issues. And typically, demolition orders are not reversible. You can’t just go in there and fix it. You can’t go there and fix the roof or fix the structure or whatever it is and say, “Hey, remove my demolition order!” Usually, once a demolition order is handed down, it cannot be reversed.

Now, there’s two ways to demolish a structure. You can pay to have it demolished, or if you don’t want to demolish it or you fail to demolish it, guess what? The county is going to come in there and demolish it for you, and they’re going to send you a pretty sizeable bill.

So, how can you determine if a piece of property has a condemnation or a demolition order? Well, it’s simple. Place a phone call. Call your local Code Enforcement Office, or if you don’t have a Code Enforcement Office, call the Building Department in your area and ask them, “Can I give you an address and will you tell me if there’s a condemnation order or a demolition order?” They’re going to be more than happy to help you.

So, for more information on the very lucrative tax sale business, including more information about condemnation orders and demolition orders, check out my website at TaxSaleAcademy.com. That’s TaxSaleAcademy.com. Have a great day, folks! Bye-bye.