Research before a Tax Deed Auction Question

[Ronald Stanley]

Hey Family,

I plan on spending this week and next week getting ready to bid in June’s auction. I am focusing on two counties. Dekalb and Floyd County in GA. Both of them seem to have the largest list of tax sales. Here is the issue I am running into that I would like to get advice on. Actually, its two issues.

#1. As of today, one of the counties list has 291 properties for sale and the second county has 284. In the last six days, the number has not changed. I was hoping the list would grow smaller and smaller the closer we get to the auction, but that’s not been the case. I gathered from my last post that I should complete most of my research the week before sale.

Do I need to go through all 575 properties? Mostly everyone on the list is past due by $5000 or less which falls within my budget. I want to focus on single family homes since I don’t know enough about land at this point.

If not, is there a way to pick the ones that are least likely to redeem so I don’t have to look at all 575 homes. i.e. look for deceased owners, people in jail, large amount of taxes due…????

It seems overwhelming to look at 575 homes and only have 7 days to do it. I understand from the last post that I will look at homes that end of getting pulled of the list the day of the auction, but I want to be as efficient as I can.

#2. All the Youtubers I have listened to encourage their subscribers to learn to complete their own title searches. I spoke with a real estate attorney last week and he told me that best practice is to pay for a title search before buying a tax deed. He specified that I might be able to get a title examiner to complete a one owner title search or a quick mortgage or lien search covering the last ten years. He said it would cost $150 to $200. I’m am not opposed to doing this, but I can see how this can get really expensive quickly. Especially if it may take going to 4 or 6 auctions before I actually win a bid. I paid for a premium membership to the GA superior clerks’ authority’s website so I can research liens. I spoke to one of the clerks who gave me a quick lesson on liens, releases, and nulla bonas. I am writing all this to say that I will not be very confident that I am running a complete and correct title search before this sale, but I will know the basics. Here are my questions.

1. 1. Should I pay for a title search for my first auction if I am not confidant on my title searching skills?
2. 2. Should I skip this auction and learn to complete my own title search before I bid? If so, can you recommend any training courses for this or how you learned to do it yourself and how long it took you?

I am confident I can learn to do it myself, but I suspect that I may have to pay 20 to 50k to win a bid in the areas I am looking at. At least that was the average cost of land that sold at the first auction that I attended. I would hate to make an expensive mistake because I didn’t dish out a couple hundred dollars for a title search.

Sorry for the long post. I am just trying to wrap my head around how I should be allocating my time and resources.

Thanks in advance