Tax liens redemption

[Samy Nasreddine]

Hey everyone,

I need help here. I purchased a bunch of tax liens, all in the county of West Haven in Connecticut through REI Holdings. I want to get my money back on a few of them cause I have a 15 year time frame to act on it and they are due by January 2018.

I'd like to know what would be the best way to go about it. I talked to a rep at REI Holdings. As they told me before I bought them, they can take care of everything but they never mentioned to me that I would need to send 3000$ as a retainer for the lawyer to start the process of foreclosure for each and every one of the liens I own.

Not sure if I absolutely have to use their lawyer but if not, what should I do. The lady at REI couldn't tell me, out of 3000$, how much are not refundable. The liens are low so I don't want to spend more money than what's owed to me.

Did anyone of you go through the process and can guide me?

Thank you

[Keith Thompson]

@Samy Nasreddine sounds like you need to find a specialty lawyer to help you navigate what gets reimbursed and when.  Be careful in choosing a specialist, I've spent a bunch on folks that said they knew the process but actually had no idea what to do.  The result was lost time, poor performance and nearly loss of right to foreclose.  I had to ride one atty like a rented mule to keep him moving - I've peeled his cases off and assigned them to others.

I'd take @William Joseph up on his offer to find a non-REI attorney. Those attys are likely to be more cost effective and objective. I'd interview a several of them before picking one (or two) to go with. AND, you don't have to light the fuse on all the liens at once. If you're going to do liens regularly, you might want to hire a couple of attys to see who performs the best.

Also, in my area, even the notices are recoverable if I wait for a specific period of time to pass. Ask each atty what their process is, and ask about timeliness of performance.  Finding attys that will act in a timely fashion was my biggest hurdle.

@John Knight is on target.  If you goal is to prompt redemption, kicking off the process will often bring them to the table -- along some point of that process... or not, in which case get the property.

Here's how I now find the right attorney's...

The court system in my locale has a rudimentary online judicial lookup function that covers the state & counties.  I can't search on case type, but I can pick a timeframe, county or counties and download the results into a spreadsheet.  The results include attorney names and the case type code which I then sort on. I'm looking for the attorneys that do the most business in specific counties and then I look at a sampling of the specific cases to see which of those performs the fastest, i.e. time from initial filing to signed order.  These top performers are the folks I then reach out to.  These are the folks that are focused on handling foreclosures and have the processes in place to do them efficiently. 

It turns out that these are also the most cost effective.  I went from $2,500 plus costs to $1,100 plus costs by doing this.  Then I hired several attorneys to see how they perform.  I've reduced my active attorneys list from about 12-ish to about 5-ish, including a bankruptcy atty.  I have a go-to list for specialists in specific counties, but dropping my overall numbers has really simplified tracking my active actions.

Finding the right attorneys is crucial in this business. Spend some time doing same kind of due diligence on this as you do on selecting the liens to buy.

Good Luck!!!