Property assessor reports can be a HUGE resource when you start researching tax sale properties. Watch this video as we explain and show you how to use property appraiser reports.

Transcript:

Hey everybody! It’s Casey Denman here with TaxSaleAcademy.com. In this video, we’re talking about Property Appraisal Reports. We’re actually doing a lot more than just talking about them. I’m going to show you a quick little clip of me using the Property Appraiser’s website to research tax sale properties.

Now, not every Property Appraiser has this information available online. But if they do, it’ll be a great, great benefit to you and it will speed your research up a whole heck of a lot as you’ll see in this quick little clip. So, let’s cut to it.

So right now, we’re now on the website “Google.” I think just about everybody is familiar with Google. What we’re going to do is we’re going to use Google in order to find the Property Appraiser’s website, which will eventually take us to the Property Report for a specific piece of property.

So what we’re going to do is we’re going to type in an actual county appraiser. And this is just a random kind that we chose to use for our example that’s located in North Central Florida.

So there we are. There are a few different options. We’re actually going to click on “Property Search.” Now, what we have right here is we have a variety of methods we can use to search for property in this county. We can use the Sales Search, Subdivision Name Search, Owner’s Name, Property Address, Parcel Number, all sorts of different stuff. If you were looking at a tax sale property and you had the parcel number, click on Parcel Number. It will take you directly to that property.

What we’re going to do is we’re going to click on Owner’s Name just for our example. We’re going to type in “Jones” just because it’s a fairly common name and I’m sure I’ll be able to find a property I can show you their report on.

Click on List and it will load for us. Now, it shows us everybody with the last name “Jones” in this county. Obviously, if you enter just a parcel number, it’s going to pull up just one piece of property. Let’s click on this parcel number and it will take us to the Property Appraiser’s Report.

Now here, the first thing you want to do is you want to take this parcel number and compare it to the Legal Description. You want to make sure this legal description matches exactly the description given on the tax sale list as well as the parcel number. Sometimes, there could be a clerical error. If this number is just one digit off, you’re going to get a totally different legal description, you’re just going to be looking at the wrong property. So you want to make sure it matches up.

Now, it also tells us the taxpayer’s name. In this example, the mailing address is in Clearwater while the location is in High Springs. So right there, you can kind of gather that this person is an out-of-area owner. It tells us the use of the property, the subdivision, area and all sorts of good stuff.

We’ll scroll down here and we’ll actually – now, we’ll talk about the Assessment History. As you can see here, from 1995 to 1999, the property was vacant. Prior to 1994, they don’t have records available online. From 2000 until 2002, they were apparently building the structure. 2003 is when they finished building the structure, and that’s the first time a value was placed on a building that was on the land.

And then now, as you can see, the value went up during the real estate boom from 2007 to 2009. It started declining then. In 2010, it went down a little bit and it just continues to decline. On the right hand side, it tells us the taxes that are due on the piece of property. As of right now, the yearly taxes are $4,110.53.

Let’s keep scrolling and we’ll gather some more information. On the Land, it says “Single Family Residential River.” That’s “SFR River” here. The Zoning is “Residential (R1)” and the Acreage is 10.65 acres.

We’ll keep scrolling. On the left hand side, you’ll see the Actual Year Built is 2002. The Use is single family. Bedroom is 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1.5 stories. Cedar/Redwood sidings, central air conditioning and forced air heating.

On the right hand side here, it gives us the Square Footage. It says Base Area is 640 feet. The Open Porch is 380 feet. Finished Upper Story is 288 feet. So a Heated of 928 square feet. Not a huge place, but not too tiny, I guess.

The Total Area, including the non-heated areas, is 1,308 feet. And it also gives us a little diagram down here of the layout of the building.

Then we can scroll down a little bit further and it will tell us the sales histories here. In 2000, it was sold for $96,000 and it was vacant at that time. So you can take right here that the owner purchased it in 2000. And since the house was constructed in 2002, they purchased it and they built the house just about immediately.

So there’s lots of great information on a Property Appraiser’s Report. Now, some are more advanced than other ones. Some might just have this one top section for us here that we use, while other Property Appraiser’s Reports are even more detailed than this one.

As you can see, using Property Appraiser Reports will provide you with a wealth of knowledge right there at your fingertips. Now, this is just one of the different resources that we use to research tax sale properties. Inside The Tax Sale Academy, we discuss all the different resources that we use which will help you to research these tax sale properties thoroughly and accurately. That way, you can make a very successful tax sale investment.

If you’d like more information on the very lucrative tax sale business and how to research tax sale properties, head on over to my website at TaxSaleAcademy.com. And you can do that by clicking the blue link at the bottom of this video. Again, it will take you to TaxSaleAcademy.com. And once you’re there, download your free copy of my e-book, The Tax Sale Blueprint.

Have a great day, folks! Bye-bye.