Tax Deed Sales in Florida

[Daniel Miller]

I have been interested in getting into tax deed sales for sometime now. I just sat down today to really soak up everything I could about them.

I looked at the calendar and the subject county has approximately 30-40 tax deed sales daily! The only issue is that 99% of their tax deed sales look like this:

Final Judgment Amount: $269,754

Taxable Amount: $101,875

What exactly does this mean? If someone buys the property are they on the hook for the ENTIRE final judgement amount? There is no reason for anyone to buy a property at a tax deed sale in the subject county if this is true...

I am confused. I have looked around but could not find a definitive answer to my question. Thanks!

[Patrick L.]

@Daniel Miller As Wayne said you need to be very careful with these auctions because there is no title insurance and you can get stuck with liens. Any government, utility and HOA liens will survive as well as any liens that the lender did not successfully foreclose out. Most importantly make sure the foreclosure you are bidding on is the first mortgage and not a second or HOA foreclosure because you'll be taking possession subject to the senior liens if that's the case. Take a look at the past results on the foreclosure auctions on that same calender and you'll see the majority go back to the plaintiff and the majority of the rest go for damn near market rate. The ones that are worth looking at more closely are the ones that show the plaintiff's max bid and if that's reasonable number it's worth looking into more. Often the plaintiff will bid the judgement amount because they haven't had a chance to come up with a value on the property or there could be other reasons (mortgage insurance, a HUD backed loan, etc). I have bid on a lot of houses at the foreclosure auctions and the majority of the time I see people bidding way too much.

The tax deed auctions in Pinellas are once per month (occasionally they were be more than one auction with the 2nd one being properties from the month before that were bid on but not paid for).

Keep in mind with both the foreclosure and tax deed auctions you will have less than 24 hours to pay in full and you will have no inspection periods. If you bid and win you'll immediately be charged a 5% deposit from your escrow account (which you must fund prior to bidding) and if you don't pay in full on time you'll lose that money and be banned from bidding for 1 year.