Far too many people ignore the importance of doing site visits for vacant properties BEFORE you ever consider purchasing them! Watch this video to find out what you need to look for!
Transcript:
Hi! Casey Denman here with TaxSaleAcademy.com. In this video, we’re talking about doing site visits for vacant land coming up at tax sale auction.
Now, a lot of people tend to overlook vacant land when it comes to doing the proper research or doing those site visits. Unfortunately, this can be a huge, huge mistake. While vacant land might be easier in the sense that there’s not a whole lot of structural issues to worry about – the house is not going to fall down, no broken windows, broken doors, mold or anything like that – there is still a lot of stuff you must do and a lot of things you need to research when it comes to vacant land.
Either you do a site visit yourself or hire a scout, as we teach in the academy, figure out some way to do this research because if you don’t, believe me, it can come back to haunt you and it will bite you right in the butt. So let’s talk about the 5 things you need to look for when you’re doing your site visits for vacant land coming out of tax sale auction.
The first one is the access. Is the property accessible? Every year, I see it time and time again. Landlocked properties will come up for auction and somebody will bid on these properties, thinking that they have access to a beautiful 40 acre tract. When in reality, they can’t access that property. So you have to make sure it’s accessible.
Number 2 – and this is something again I see time and time again – is elevation. Check the elevation of the property. You’re going to see a lot of swampland property coming up at tax sale auction; a lot of wet properties. Make sure the property is high and dry and that there’s not any wet lands or moist soil or anything like that.
Number 3, check your ability to build on the piece of property. It might require a site visit and a visit to the county. But if you can’t build on the property, believe me, your value is going to drop tremendously. The only value that it has in is possibly to a neighbor and it’s possible they don’t care if you buy it or not because they know nothing can ever be done with it so they’ll just leave it and you’ll be stuck with a piece of property that you can’t build on.
Number 4, you also have to look for content. What is on the property? Is there a lot of trees on it? Is it thickly wooded? Is there a lot of brush on it, or even worse, is there old cars, old tires, or possibly, is it the neighborhood dumping ground? Is it where everybody takes their weekly trash and just throws on your property? Because that is something that you’re going to deal with sooner or later, or if you don’t deal with it, you could be facing all sorts of civil or criminal fines if you were to purchase that property.
And the fifth thing you need to look for here is check on the surrounding areas. Check out the neighbors on both sides. Check out the road that it fronts. Is it a decent area? Are there good schools nearby? Are there lakes, rivers, parks or anything like that? Any other amenities nearby? Golf courses, country clubs, all these things will help your value. So check out the surrounding areas and see if it either increases your value or possibly could even decrease your value if it’s in a bad area.
So again, the 5 things to look for here when it comes to doing your site visits for vacant land coming out of tax sale auctions is the access, elevation, your ability to build, the contents on that vacant land and the surrounding areas. There’s a lot of money to be made investing in vacant land through tax sale auctions. So what I suggest you doing here is make sure you do all that research that you need to do. Don’t skimp out on anything. Make sure your research is sufficient so you can make an informed decision.
Throughout my career, I have made the majority of my money through tax sale investing probably with these vacant land properties. We’re probably talking 60% to 70% of the properties that I purchased even to this day are vacant land. So there’s a lot of money to be made here. Of course, there’s a lot of money to be made on all sectors of tax sale investing, including the residential stuff and the commercial stuff. But vacant land lets you get in very cheaply. It doesn’t require a whole lot of capital and you can make a lot of money, again, if you do the proper research.
So I hope you’ve enjoyed this video. If you’d like to see more videos just like this one, head over to my website at TaxSaleAcademy.com, which you can do by clicking the blue link right here next to my head. Again, head on over to TaxSaleAcademy.com. And once you get there, download your free copy of my e-book, The Tax Sale Investing Blueprint, and you’ll be on your way to a very successful tax sale investing career.
Take care, folks! Bye-bye.