Paying Past Due Property Taxes

[Oneil Guntner]

I was recently listening to episode 293 of the BiggerPockets podcasts where Chad Carson talks about his tax lien strategy. Does Ventura County do this? It looked like they list homes for auctions but I didn't see anything about buying property tax notes. If you don't know about Ventura County maybe you can give more explanation to whether or not this is a good strategy. If I can figure out how this works I may be able to pull money that is just in a savings account accumulating practically 0% interest and give the investor a higher return on their money while also getting a small kickback for my effort. This may be a good way for me to side hustle some extra cash to save up for my first home purchase. The investor would have enough money to buy the house if it came to that. I wasn't sure if they get to just take over the mortgage? Also, what happens if multiple notes don't pay back are you then responsible for taking over all of them? I believe Chad had said that you get to decide the interest rate but I'm not sure if I heard that right. What is the average or fair interest rate amount for something like this? Any information helps, thank you!

[John Underwood]

Originally posted by @Tanner Sherman:

Oneil, 

I have not yet read, but it just came in this week from Amazon, The 16% solution. It is a book that I discovered from Rich Dad Poor Dad that goes over these types of situations. Hopefully you beat me to finishing this book and can benefit from it. I do not know much about tax liens, but the idea of putting your money into it with a 16% return sounds much better than the .000000000000000000 (infinitely tedious 001) percent from a savings account. What I do know is that it is very rare to be awarded a property through the purchase of tax liens. The best case is basically just that you get a high percentage savings account. When it comes to the "you choose the percentage", you don't, you bid against others who would also like to purchase this tax lien. There are companies out there that focus on this so the competition is much higher. The dream is to get a 16% return, but if these companies are willing to take 1% less than you no matter what you say then it gets tough. The ones that make it to the news are the "Person won property from tax lien after honest farmer forgot to pay taxes". Obviously it is much more difficult to lose your property from not paying taxes than this. All of this is on your county's website if they offer tax liens. 

Hope this helps,

Tanner

 I own many properties that are now rentals that I acquired at tax lien auctions. I gotb5 houses one year, but average 1 or 2 per year.