Does it Even Have Access?

Watch this quick video as we discuss what is arguably the most important feature any property can have . . . road access.

Transcript:

Hey, everybody! Casey Denman here with TaxSaleAcademy.com. In this video, we’re talking about something very simple and is often overlooked – Does it have road access?

It sounds very stupid, to be honest with you. Why would you buy a piece of property that doesn’t front some sort of road? But believe it or not, a lot of tax sale investors purchase these properties every single year. A lot of these subdivisions, especially older subdivisions developed 50 or 100 years ago, they’re developed and the lots were sold off before the developer finished those subdivisions.

So you might be looking at a piece of property on Jones St. It looks like a great piece of property. Good size, near a lake or whatever. You buy it for a bargain at a tax sale auction. You drive out to the property only to realize, where Jones St. is supposed to be, there are 50 year old pine trees planted there, and you can’t access your property without cutting all these trees. And in a lot of places, you aren’t even able to cut down the trees unless the county does it for you.

And guess what? Since the subdivision is so old, the county is probably not going to be very happy to go and put a road in there for you. And if they do, you’re probably going to foot the bill, which is going to cost you tens and thousands of tens of thousands of dollars here.

Now, how can you avoid a situation like this? Well, the first thing you need to do is get some sort of plat maps or GIS service. Look at these plat maps and study these plat maps. Study the different road names and the cross streets and the cities that they’re in. Then take this information, and then try to transpose it to some sort of aerial mapping service like Google Maps or Bing Maps. And I’ve done videos on both Google and Bing aerial mapping services in the past which can be very helpful in a situation like this. But again, transpose these plat maps onto different aerial maps and make sure that your roads exist.

Now, what happens here is if you don’t have a road, you’re not going to have a lot of other stuff either. You’re not going to have water, you’re not going to have sewer, you’re not going to have electricity, your telephone or your natural gas lines. I mean, you’re not going to have anything. So when you buy a piece of property that doesn’t have a road, you’re literally buying a tax bill, more or less. You’re buying junk property.

And unfortunately, what happens with a lot of these properties is they become known as what we call “frequent flyers” in the business. Somebody will buy it, not realizing that it doesn’t have road frontage, and they’ll buy it with big hopes and big dreams to sell it and make a lot of money. It doesn’t have road frontage. They say, “Nah, I’m not going to pay the taxes on it.” Two to three years later, then it goes back up for auction again. And then it happens over and over to somebody else. These are called “frequent flyers” and you will see a lot of properties without road frontage at tax sale auctions so you have to be very, very careful here.

So, I hope this has helped give you some insight on the tax sale business. And one of the things that you need to research, one of the very important things that you need to research, obviously, is if your property has road frontage.

For more information about the tax sale investing business, head on over to my website at TaxSaleAcademy.com. And you can do that by clicking the blue link right here next to my head. Again, it will take you to TheTaxSaleAcademy.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.