Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Hints On Obtaining Tax Liens On-line

By Dale Poyser


Figure out if Buying Tax Liens Are For You

Even before you choose to become a tax lien investor, you should learn about the pros and cons

You need to understand a few common things about tax lien investing, like the difference between a tax deed and tax lien county or state and what bidding on the premium is. When you have a good grasp on the fundamentals of buying tax liens, you should decide if this is something that you would really like.

If you feel that being a tax lien investor is in your future, keep reading!

Find A Good Website For Purchasing Tax Liens

This is actually the easy part. Tax liens are sold by county so you should pick a county you want to invest in, then locate the website for that county.

You could use the google search engine and enter terms like "buy tax liens in texas" or "counties in texas with tax lien sales." Replace texas with whatever state you are interested in. For example, if I wanted to invest in a county in Florida I would type in "Florida Tax Collector" in the Google search engine.

This step will give you a lot of results to filter through.

Sign up With some Tax Lien Websites

Keep in mind that not all Tax Lien auctions are available online so your county of choice may not be available.

Be ready to fill in personal information about yourself such as your social security number, bank routing info or credit card info for funding and payment purchases, this is normal. You may also need to fund or provide funding for your account which will be used to purchase the Liens if you win a successful bid.

Understand how the Tax Lien Bidding process works

There are quite a few ways to bid during tax lien sales auctions. One of several bidding methods will be used if more than one investor bids on the same property.

Depending on the laws of the county, the bid winner will be determined by one of the five methods below. Bid Down the Interest.with this method, investors will bid against each other to see who will accept the lower interest rate. In some cases the interest rate can go as low as 0%, but this is rare.

Premium.Under this method, the investor bid against each other to see who will pay the higher "premium" (above the face value of the lien). The additional premium may or may not earn interest, and (in some states) the investor might not get the additional premium back if the lien is redeemed. Colorado is a state that uses the premium bid method.

Random Selection.bidders are selected randomly when this method is used. In most cases a computer does the random selection but this can vary. Nevada uses the random selection method.

Rotational Selection. With this method, the first lien will be offered to the investor holding bid ticket number one. If the first bidder passes on the lien, the next bid ticket holder gets priority of the lien. However, bidder number one will not be offered another lien until their ticket number comes up again in the rotation. The next lien then goes to the next number in line.

Bid Down the Ownership. This method is used in Iowa and a few other states, the investor willing to purchase the lien for the lowest percent of ownership on the property will be awarded the lien. An example of this would be a case where the winning bidder only owns 60% of a tax lien. If the lien is not redeemed, the bid winner only receives 85% ownership of the property with the remaining 15% owned by the original owner. In actuality, very few investors will bid on liens for less than full ownership to the property.

So in the even there are multiple bidders on the same tax lien, the random selection method will be used. Liens that are not purchased at the auction are turned over to the county. Some states allow "over the counter" purchases of liens not sold at auction.




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