First Deal: The 500 dollar house

[DAmien Fried]

So we acquired our first property for 500 dollars. After months of looking at different properties we finally decided to go a nontraditional route. We bought this house of the tax repository list which the county was originally asking $1850, we could see in the basement window there was about four feet of water and since we could not "legally" enter the property we estimated some other issues we might run it to and offered $500 and the offer was accepted by the tax office. We then needed to wait for the sale to be approved by the school board and the borough council, that took about two months and the deed for the property showed up in the mail. Our plan is to gut the place and do a complete remodel over the next year. The nice thing is we already have about $35,000 of equity in the property and we only have to pay taxes on the $500 until we would have the county come and appraise it. We are hoping that if all goes as planned we will buy the other half of the house later this year since it to is sitting empty.

[Greg Rusianoff]

Wow congrats! You can't go wrong with this one at that price.  I've been interested in PA tax sales. What government entity handles the tax sales in PA? Isn't it run by the sherriff of each county? 

Who owns the other half?