Buying properties at the Harris County Constable's Auction

[Ann Watkins]

Hi All,

I'm looking to get some blanks filled in and share the bit of information I have. So I want to get more into buying properties at the Harris County Constable's Auction. This event...um...circus takes place every first Tuesday of the month at the Family Law Center on Congress.

These auctions are primarily for taxes from the various school districts and other municipalities.

So here is what I do...and I'm being very open throated here so go easy on me...lol.

I pick out properties on the Linebarger website www.publicans.com that meet my criteria. Minimum bid amount, number of bedrooms, location, year it was foreclosed on. Not exactly in that order of course and the year is important to me because the older the foreclosure I figure the less chance of the previous owners making a last minute deal which would cause the sale to be canceled.

Then I google the address to get an idea of what the property looks like and the location. You'd be surprised how many houses have become vacant lots or have been torn down. But...but...I have also found some vacant lots with very nice homes on them that the taxing districts were not aware of.

Next I pull as many records as I have access to online. Tax records, payment of taxes, MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration System..or something like that) it doesn't always return a mortgage but sometimes it does, Courthousedirect.com to see what they have by way of liens and other civil filings, and also the Clerk of Courts - I search the property and the owner.

Somewhere in between all this...I can't resist and I drive out to the location and see what I can see.

If the property is still available a week before the sale I start putting my money together. Getting cashiers checks and cash. I've learned on this when I forgot the Monday before the auction was a holiday and had to spend the whole weekend hitting up ATMS and paying fees to Western Union to transfer my own money to me to get the cash. But hey, I was the successful bidder that time and got the property I wanted.

If it's a condo, I call the HOA and try to social engineer as much information as humanly possible from them. One time all my talking got the property pulled at the last minute.

I guess I should have known when the HOA member said "What auction?" and "Who told you that" this was not going to come out in my favor. They quickly paid the tax and it got pulled that day.

I've even paid for a title search once only to find out there was no new information than what I already had. So that is now like a last option, as you could pay for the title search and then it get's pulled.

So the part I would like someone to fill in the blank for me on is this. How do I determine "first lien position" if none of the steps I'm doing shows a mortgage. Believe it or not, I've only gone to the court house to research just a couple of times and didn't get the impression I'd really gotten everything.

Okay, thanks for reading and I look forward to learning new information.