Transcript:
Welcome to the Tax Sale Podcast, where tax sale investing is made easy. My name is Casey Denman, I’m a tax sale veteran, the leading tax sale expert, author of The Tax Sale Playbook, founder of The Tax Sale Academy and I’m your host right here on The Tax Sale Podcast.
Thank you so much for joining me on today’s podcast episode. This is a completely free podcast and is brought to you through and because of The Tax Sale Academy. If you’re looking to learn more about investing in tax defaulted real estate, just head to TaxSaleAcademy.com. Again that’s TaxSaleAcademy.com.
One of the common issues new investors have is that the tax sale business starts off as something that seems pretty easy. But, then they quickly realize that there actually is quite a bit too it. Overwhelm takes over and eventually they leave the business entirely. And this is actually something that I’ve seen happen time and time again in my career. And obviously, this is such a big reason that I have the academy to begin with.
So on today’s episode I want to provide you with some of the tactics, strategies and knowledge that will help you understand this business a little better, which will ultimately allow it to be much easier for you. Now, I’m not telling you that THESE are easy. I’m not telling you that this business is easy. But . . . if you take the time to learn about all of these and understand them fully, then your business will become much easier because of it.
So here we go, here are seven ways to make tax sale investing business easier for you.
The first is to know the laws. I’ve said this one about a million times, but the laws in your state that relate to tax sales are your business. Without them, we don’t exist as tax sale investors. It’s as simple as that. Yet, so many people completely ignore this fact and NEVER, not one time, read any of the laws related to tax sale investing. Make the time and spend a couple of hours one evening, reading the laws that apply, taking notes and analyzing what they mean. Yes, it might be boring, but that doesn’t matter. Learn these laws and you will avoid all of the aggravation that comes from the alternative. If you don’t know these laws, this business gets much harder than it should. If you want success in this business, and if you want to make your life so much easier, know these laws.
The next piece of advice to help make your business much easier is to have a process . . . have a process for everything! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve see people show up to auctions to begin researching properties. They flip open newspapers and start asking around about a property, then they’ll research the property appraiser’s reports . . . like minutes before it’s being sold. That’s obviously an extreme example, but develop a process. Start with a process about which auction list you want to research. Instead of going aimlessly from one county to the next just browsing until you stumble across something develop a process. Nail down the type of investment you want to invest in, liens or deeds, then systematically work through the state’s you’re interested. When you begin researching properties, have a system on what exactly you’ll be researching. Figure out the most efficient way for your business. If you’re looking at a property assessor’s report, for example, what exactly are you looking for? Do it the same way every time. These are just some examples, but I have a process for everything in my tax sale business. I have a process for determining which auctions I go to, for researching properties, for preparing for auctions, for auction registeration, a process for choosing my seat for in person auctions or for logging on to online auctions, I have a process to track my successful and unsuccessful bids, I have an after auction process even if I didn’t win any properties, I have a process for marketing, a process for the sales process. Some of these are much more detailed than others, but I don’t believe in just winging it and hoping I succeed. Instead I’ve developed and tweak processes over the years and I highly suggest you do as well if you want your business to operate as easily as possible.
The next one is that I don’t speculate. So many people think investing is the same thing as speculating. And sure, there is always the risk of loss. There is also a risk that we aren’t here tomorrow, so in theory we are all speculating with everything we do. But the point is that I don’t blindly buy anything. I always have a plan, along with a backup plan, for every single property that I purchase. I have a large contact list of investors that I sell to regularly. If one investor doesn’t want to purchase the property for whatever reason, there is another next in line. It’s simply up to me to line up these buyers, figure out what exactly they want and then go buy it. Now, it hasn’t always been this way. When I didn’t have specific people identified to sell my investments to, I’d identify a large potential audience where I knew it’d be easy to exit the investment. It’s much easier to resell a 1200 house or a ¼ acre lot than it is to resell a lighthouse, right? Don’t buy properties based on speculation. Buy properties based on your confidence in your exit strategy.
Speaking of lighthouses and complicated transactions, the next one is to keep it simple. This is something I’ve done most of my career and it’s worked extremely well for me. I routinely get emails with long and crazy scenarios from brand new investors who are trying to, in quote, beat the system. They’ve come up with some sort of weird idea that they think will change the world. Yet, they’ve never purchased a piece of real estate before and they just learned about tax sale investing yesterday. The results will always be disastrous. Instead of going after the most complicated deals, focus on the simple ones. That means you should buy the boring vacant lot instead of that old schoolhouse building that’s being offered for sale. The same can be said for your all aspects of your business. While sometimes you need to be creative in certain aspects like borrowing funds, the overwhelming majority of the time you should focus on keeping everything as simple as possible. It’ll make your business and life much easier.
The next one is closely related and that is to focus on low effort, high reward transactions. I mentioned this in a podcast recently. I try to focus every second I get on low effort, high reward transactions. From a monetary standpoint, determine the value of your time. If you’re investing week’s worth of effort into a transaction and you’re only making $500, then the value of your time might come out to 3 or 4 bucks an hour. So instead, change strategies and find properties to invest in that you can resell quickly, easily, with few potential complications. This will not only increase the value of your time invested in that transactions, but odds are it’ll keep you much happier in life. And speaking of that, we can all use this same equation in our life. It’s miserable when we are working so hard at something, even if it’s a friendship for example, and the reward is low. Focus on low effort, high reward transactions and I promise you’ll be much happier and successful.
And the last one is to embrace adversity. I heard someone mention a short time ago that adversity is a tool. It’s not suffering, you shouldn’t look at it as painful or something that holds you back. You should look at it as a tool to grow. Every time I struggled in business and every single investment that I made that was extremely difficult for me, caused me to grow. On a specific level, when I started to invest out of area I didn’t take the time to study and learn the local laws. I eventually ended up with a few court summons and tickets. This caused a lot of aggravation for me, but guess what? The next time I invested out of area, you better believe that I learned the laws there. The same can be said when the market turned in the 2008 financial crisis. I learned that I needed to adjust my strategies as the market changed. Eventually I got to the point where I was making as much if not more money in a down market than a good one. Adversity is the tool that we use to learn. It’s a tool that we use to become better educated and it’s a tool, that, when used properly, will bring us success as a direct result.
Tax sale investing DOES NOT have to be this complicated business. In fact, when you’re doing it correctly it should be extremely easy. Just keep these points in mind. Again they were know your laws, have a process for everying, don’t speculate, keep it simple, focus on low effort/high reward transactions, and embrace adversity. If you focus on making your busy as easy as possible, it’ll allow you freedom in your business, it’ll reduce your stress and workload and you’ll likely become much more successful in the long run because of it.
I truly hope that today’s episode has helped you. If so, please take just a few seconds out of your day to leave a positive review on whatever podcasting platform you’re listening to us on today.
And if we can be of any help in your quest for tax sale success, there are a number of links in the show notes section including one to our primary website at TaxSaleAcademy.com where you can join the academy for our most advanced step by step training that we offer.
I’ll see you next time right here on the TaxSalePodcast.
Take care and make it a successful day. See ya!