Gwinnett county, GA = Tax sale - High prices

[Ed Tamayo]

This week I went to the Gwinnett County, Georgia, tax sale and I am sharing my experience as it was little bit different than dozens of other tax sales that I have attended.

I have been buying properties in tax sales for about five years now in Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee and what I found unusual was how high the properties went for. One house sold for more than the county assessment something that I have never seen before. Other houses weren’t too far off from the county assessment. Of course, the county assessment is usually lower than the market value but I don’t recall seeing paying as much. Furthermore, people doing the bidding appeared to be people who had done tax sales before.

In Georgia you get 20% interest if the former owner redeems on the first year, and you can do a foreclosure of right to redeem one year after the tax sale. Only after the foreclosure has been done, you can access the house. 

[John Underwood]

The same thing here in Upstate SC.

I think the smaller counties is where you might be able to get better prices as the institutional investors only go to the larger counties. I try and look at literally everything online and drive by anything I might be interested in. That allows me to hopefully find a few gems that the masses may have missed. To make matters worse the war zones are turning into 300k neighborhoods so it is attracting even more people.