San Diego Tax Defaulted Property Auction

[Matt Burr]

I am interested in purchasing a house at a tax defaulted property auction and had a few questions.  

1)  In California the previous owner has up to a year to protest the auction.  It seems like from my research that this rarely happens and rarely gets the property back in court.   However I'm wondering if others purchasing properties at a tax defaulted auction worry about this?

2)  Do you guys purchase these properties with hard money?

3)  Do you wait a year to renovate the property (considering question #1)

4)  If you do wait a year and you use hard money to purchase the house, do you take out a traditional rehab loan at the end of year one or continue the hard money loan till the end of rehab (16-18 months total)?

5) Considering the risks of buying at an auction and not knowing the condition of the house do you guys set a max bid at 50% ARV? or some other benchmark?

Thanks!