Transcript:
Welcome to the Tax Sale Podcast, where tax sale investing is made easy.
I’m Casey Denman, a tax sale veteran, the leading tax sale expert and trainer, author of the tax sale playbook, founder of the tax sale academy and your host here on the tax sale podcast.
I’m so excited about today’s episode guys. Today I want to discuss with you the different ways for you to build a foundation for you tax sale business. Now, I’ve got an incredible amount of training material about tax sale investing. I’d venture to say I probably offer the most tax sale training resources in the world between all of my different platforms.
But today, I want to get back to the very basics. I want you to have the tools necessary to build your business. I want to help you build the foundation required for your tax sale success. Now, I can’t provide every single tool necessary in a short podcast episode, that’s why we have The Tax Sale Academy, but at the very least, I can get you pointed in the right direction.
I’d like to start with an analogy for you. It’s an aviation related analogy, which I’ve talked about before. But aviation is similar to tax sale investing – one involves the loss of life and the other involves the loss of money. Both pretty serious issues to most people, right?
Ok, when I first started training to become a pilot, I thought I needed to know just how to fly an airplane. The truth was, that flying a plane is a very minor piece of it. I needed to know about why an airplane flies, had to learn about weather, how compasses work, how airspace is designed, I even had to learn about how the gauges work. I needed to know everything in order to be a safe pilot.
But . . . what if when I was learning to fly, the very first thing I did was walk into the airport, grab the keys off of their hook, open the airplane’s door and Googled how to start it up and then I took off. The results wouldn’t have been very good. Luckily when it’s a matter of life and death, most people understand the importance of having a solid foundation.
When it comes to tax sale investing, for whatever reason, why is it any different? If you’ve followed me for any period of time you know that I’m a straight shooter. Sure, I’ll tell you this business has some amazing opportunities, that it can be extremely lucrative, and very enjoyable, but I’ll never tell you to start without learning or that you can get rich quick.
So today, I want to give you five pieces, five keys to your foundation right now that can help you insure you’re prepared for success. Here me out. The titles might not sound life changing. But they can certainly become life changing IF you take the time to use these pieces as the foundation for your business.
1. Real Estate Basics. That’s right. The very basics of real estate. The seemingly minor stuff. If you’ve ever purchased real estate before, pull out all of those docs and study them. If not, get to work on Google. I teach all of this stuff in The Academy and you’d be surprised how many people email me after the first couple of lessons about the basics and tell me about how much they’ve learned. Let me provide you an example: When we buy or sell real estate, what are we buying? We’re not buying an address. We’re not buying a house. We’re not buying a condo or some farmland. We’re buying a legal description. Of course there might be a farm, a house or a condo on that land, but we never purchase a house. We’re buying the legally described real estate. Now, hopefully once you understand this you’ll begin to research properties differently. Here’s some other stuff to dig into: chain of title, title insurance, title clouds, tax bills, millage rates, assessed value, appraised value, appraisal, official records, survey, CMA, BPO, depreciation, mineral rights, easement, WRAs, types of deeds, agent, broker, realtor, mortgage, lien, types of tenancy . . . I can keep going for an hour, but you probably get the idea. You must know the basics of real estate to build the foundation for your tax sale business.
2. Real Estate Market Operations. I’ve been fortunate to have been through the market cycles in my lifetime. I can remember when any idiot could buy something this week, resell it next week and make money. I can also remember when the guys worth tens and tens of millions of dollars, they big shots would lose their jets, homes and file bankruptcy. Markets go up and down. That’s a fact. But inside each of these market conditions, we have the operations or the happenings of the markets. I’m talking about the market activities and how they impact what’s going on. When Amazon comes to town, what happens? The market usually surges, right? That’s a pretty basic example, but understanding how the market changes because of the cycles and the activities in the area is a pretty big piece of the pie. I’ve seen investors who would sell a dozen vacant lots a week, accumulate and get stuck with 2 or 300 lots that they couldn’t give away but owed taxes and, sometimes, debt on. Understand the real estate market operations. Watch new developments, new businesses, read and analyze articles, follow and track areas. These are all activities YOU must start right now.
3. Marketing Basics. So you bought a few properties, now what? How do you sell them, rent them or otherwise make money from them? The days of putting a sign in the yard and waiting for someone to drive by are long gone. Selling real estate is easier than ever, IF and that’s a HUGE IF, you know what you’re doing. There are plenty of ways to leverage the power of the internet to sell your properties. I’ve got quite a few videos about it. And if you do it correctly, you can even leverage it to the point where you’ll be selling properties incredibly fast. Perhaps you’re thinking about using a Relator? That’s a great idea in many situations, but that brings up another subject of how to find the best one, how to deal with them, and how to even be a seller that assists them to do their job even better. Dig in, research selling methods and styles, learn basic internet marketing, review other listings, subscribe the mailing lists, attend open houses, find out what works by being active.
4. Tax Sale Laws. Alright, now we’re getting into more tax sale focused stuff. Once you’ve got everything so far covered we can get into more tax sale centric stuff. The very first thing to start with are the laws. And guess what? All of that real estate stuff you have previously learned will really now begin to come into play. And if you didn’t take the time to learn it, the tax sale laws will be greek to you. Go ahead and read through the laws. The tax sale laws ARE your business. They are what allow for taxes to become delinquent, for properties to be sold and for YOU to make money as a tax sale investor. If you don’t know these laws, then you’re cheating yourself. You can dig through Google to get ahold of these laws, or we have resources available for you on our site when you buy Tax Sale Playbook. However you learn about them, read, study and analyze these laws.
5. The last piece to your puzzle is knowing the tax sale process. And this varies from one area to the next. The best way to do this is to practice being a tax sale investor. I know it might sound a little amateurish to some of you guys. But, be a kid again. Pretend you’re investing in properties. Go through the ENTIRE process. Read the rules, the process and anything else posted by the county. Get your list. Research it. Source your funds. Register. Attend the auction. Whether it’s in person or if it’s online, just watch your computer screen. Go through the names of the winning bidders. See how much they paid compared to your notes. Then do it in another county and another. Know the process inside and out. I’ve been to auctions before where the rules are being read, and I’ve heard and studied them so much that I can almost recite them verbatim. Get involved in tax sale auctions. Right now. Browse sites, read information and go. The sooner the better.
Alright, I really hope this has helped out. Tax sale investing is not about just hopping into the captains seat and hoping you don’t crash. It’s about building the foundation required for sustainable, guaranteed, long term success from the very start.
What we discussed today are just a few of the pieces required. If you’d like the step by step training that so many have learned and leveraged into their own successful tax sale businesses, head to TaxSaleAcademy.com and click that join button. Again, it’s TaxSaleAcademy.com and click join.
And if you’re not yet ready to go all in, you can head to TaxSaleAcademy.com and grab your free copy of Tax Sale Playbook. Just cover the shipping cost and we’ll drop a copy in the mail for you to help get you started on your way to tax sale success.
And as always guys, if you found this episode helpful it will mean so much to us if you take a few second to leave a 5 star rating and a positive review.
Take care guys and make it a successful day.
See ya!