All Forum Posts by: Abdenour Achab

Thanks @Jerry K. for chiming in with your experience.

>  If the owners did pay after that, they had to pay attorney fees for the foreclosure up to that point.

Has your attorney, which, by the way, I believe is the same as mine, told you what happens if the property owner(s) pay the back taxes, interest, and $25 redemption fee to the county treasurer, but don't send him any money?

Mine told me that when property owner(s) ask him what they need to do to keep their property, he tells them to send a check of X dollars amount to the county treasurer, and another check of Y dollars amount to him. And that they generally do that.

But, most likely after I asked (as you can tell from my posts here, I tend to ask too many questions), if all they do is send a check of X dollars amount to the county treasurer, and nothing to him, then the tax lien foreclosure still has to stop. He then asks the court to grant his client a judgment for the legal fees, and records a lien against the property with the county to secure that judgment. And that generally then, his clients just sit idle and wait for the property to sell.

Thanks @Ned Carey for those insightful questions.

>  Have you read the statutes to know EXCTLY what is required?

Not yet. Right now, I am using the Monkey See Monkey Do method. And monkeys don't read statutes. But now that you sowed the seed in my mind, I will read them ... next month.

A couple of years ago, I hired an attorney to send notices to two property owners. I asked him to share with me copies of whatever he sent. I used that method to learn how to do it. But, now that I think of it, his letters did reach both property owners. Only after I read your question this morning did it occur to me that the statutes may spell out what do it if letters don't reach property owners and/or the people in possession.

> The best answer I have is to pay a process server to do this.

Thanks for the tip. As I stated in my original post, that was the solution I was leaning towards. Now that you said it, I am leaning more towards it. But not before I skip trace, as suggested by @Bruce Lynn, to first find out whether or not they have a PO Box.

> Do you get legal fees reimbursed when someone redeems in AZ?

Like I said above, I haven't read the statutes yet. But, I believe I know the answer to this one. In Arizona, property owners are never required to pay me back legal fees as part of the redemption process. As long as no foreclosure has been finalized, they can just pay back taxes, interest, and a $25 redemption fee to their county treasurer and redeem their property. However, if they do that after they have been served with a foreclosure lawsuit (the actual lawsuit, NOT the 30 day notice), then my lawyer, after first asking them to send him a check for the legal fees, will be able to file a judgment with the county records for the legal costs up that point. From what my lawyer told me a couple of years ago, most investors would then just wait for the property to sell and get paid their lawyers fees and court costs back. The costs for the 30 day notices are never neither reimbursed and, as far as I believe, not even included in the judgment.

So, for the five properties in question here, before paying my lawyer, I want to do my best (short of actually traveling to Arizona) to contact the property owners. And get the ones who are going to redeem their property anyway to redeem them, or take steps towards redeeming them, without the involvement of my lawyer. Then pay my lawyer for the subset of the five where I can't get them to redeem on my own.

> Even if you don't get rieimbursed you might consider a lawyer becasue how the notices are sent and what constitutes acceptable service varies by state law.

For the subset of five who I won't be able to get the property owners to redeem on my own, I plan to pay my lawyer, who will then decide whether to rely on my service, add to it, or redo it from scratch. So, I am not too concerned about not doing the service right. My priority this month (July 2023) is to be able to talk to as many of the five property owners as I can reach. Next month (August 2023) will be the lawyer's month.

SBC even paid his 2022 taxes last year. So, definitely not a deadbeat. Most likely just a disorganized guy.

I live in California, and own six tax liens in Arizona for which the redemption period has expired. I mailed out the 30 day notice to start foreclosure on five of them over the last two weeks.

One of the properties is a mobile home affixed to a permanent foundation in a remote Arizona town. There is a metal fence around the front yard, with a metal fence door. It's owned by M&M, a 69 year old single woman. USPS mail tracking states "No Access to Delivery Location" in the tracking website for the certified mail I sent her, and which got into her town on June 29. The message hasn't changed since.

While M&M hasn't paid her 2018 property taxes (which is why I own a lien almost ready to start foreclosure), and hasn't paid her 2021 and 2020 taxes either, she did pay her 2020 taxes less than three years ago. So, she may well be alive and trying to keep the property. 

How do I get the 30 day notice delivered to her without driving 7 hours to her home? I suspect that if I sent her the letter by UPS or Fedex, it would be the same problem. I guess it doesn't hurt to try though, and hope that the UPS delivery man and the Fedex delivery man will put in more effort than the mailman. M&M name is very common. Both the first name and the last name. In fact, even though it's a small town, I managed to locate an M&M in it. Just not the right M&M.

I thought about hiring a private process server. That's the solution I am leaning towards right now. I thought about the sheriff's office, but I don't know whether they would deliver a 30 day notice to start foreclosure. But I suspect the process server would show up three times and, if the doesn't come to the fence, mail her the letter, and the letter won't get delivered to her.

Ideally, I would like to avoid real estate agents, brokers, or anybody else who makes a living in the same zip code as real estate. Just to avoid giving too much advance notice to other investors in the unlikely case that the property is, in fact, available for the taking.

What I am trying to avoid is hiring a lawyer on August 1 to start the foreclosure process, have the lawyer serve her with a summons, then she redeems the tax lien, and I will end up with a lien on her home for the amount I will have paid the lawyer, and waiting 10 years or so for the property to sell before getting my lawyer fee back.

Is there some private courier service that would show up to her home and, if he can't get to see M&M, would do some leg work (such as asking the neighbors, and, if she is around, leave the letter with one of the neighbors), instead of just leaving like the mailman did?

Same questions for another property owner, SBC. He took the dead as "<Last Name> B. C.". No first name, nor middle name, on the deed. Only the initials. I wasn't able to locate him and, when I sent him a letter, the post office marked it as "No Mailbox Receptacle", and returned it to me. Just like M&M, even though SBC didn't pay his 2018 taxes, he did pay his 2020 taxes two years ago. So, he is most likely around and would redeem his house if he knew that I sent him a 30 day notice.

Any ideas on how to deliver copies of the 30 days notices to M&M and SBC, besides a process server and the sheriff's office?

Yes @David M. AZDHS.gov does provide death records!! ... For people who died over 50 years ago :-(

I did the quick Google search. Here is what seems to be the most comprehensive site: https://www.deathindexes.com/a...

The Obituaries link (http://obits.arizonagravestone...) works easy enough. You input a name, and it returns a list of dead people with that name. But I suspect searching through obituaries presents the same drawback as searching through probate records. If a dead person has family around who care enough to publish and obituary, he or she has heirs around who would redeem the lien.

Imagine some single guy who came from Europe, settled and bought a house in Arizona, cut contact with his family back home, died of old age, and the sheriff's office recovered and burried his body. Most likely no probate, no obituary, no cemetary ceremonial, no nothing. Just a dead body four feet under, and an empty house sitting idle waiting for me to acquire it. That's my kind of dead person. NOT a grand father with five kids, five step kids, 25 grand kids and 75 step grand kids. 

Some types of searches (probates, obituaries) would lead to the grand father (NOT my kind of dead of person), and miss the European loner (my kind of dead person).

 @David M.

Exactly. Out of a list I will already have created (100, 2,000, or whatever other large number), I just want to find out who died.

Thanks for the tip about the databases of the dead. I personally don't know of any though. I found out about the Social Security Administration database, available online, but it stopped publically reporting the dead a long time ago. As in over ten years ago (I don't exactly remember when - but what they report is useless to me).

Could you tell me the names of such databases and/or links to them? And, if they are not available online, how to get to them? If such databases have an API access, all the better, as, like you suggeted, I could write a script that can narrow down the list by making API calls to the database. But an API is not necessary. I can do it manually if needed.

 By the way, by "recently", I mean the last couple of years, not the last couple of days. And my area of interest is Arizona in general. Of course, if there are multiple databases in Arizona, I am willing to check all of the ones that might include people from whatever county I happen to be trying to buy liens in.

 @David M.

I never said nor implied that. Could you copy/paste anything I said that either say that or implied that?

Tax liens on desirable properties whose owner(s) have died is EXACTLY what I am trying to buy.

What I did say is that I don't want to find out who died by looking through notices to administer estates. Also, while I didn't explicitely say it, I don't want to find out who died by looking through probate records.

Probate is not filed on everyone who dies and has assets. Or at least I believe so (maybe I am mistaken). Let's say probate is filed on 90% of people who died while owning a house, and not filed on 10% of the people who died while owning a house. I want a method that can quickly narrow down a list (of 100, 2000, or whatever other big number) of names of owners or records from a big list of names, most of whom are a live, to a much shorter list of names, a bigger percentage of whom are dead, when compared to the original long list.

I don't mind if the list includes BOTH dead people on whom a probate is filed and people on whom a probate is not filed. But I don't want list in which a probate has been filed on ALL people in the list.

In other words, starting from a few needles in a huge hay stack, I want a smaller hay stack that contains most of the needles. But I don't want a smaller hay stack with no needles in it, which I is exactly what I would get if I narrowed down the list using probate records.

 > Are you saying going through the probate filings won't work for you?

Correct. My working assumption is that if I buy a tax lien in Arizona on a desirable house whose dead owner had a probate filed, at the expiration of the redemption period, my lawyer will find the heirs, notify them of a pending foreclosure action, and they will redeem the house by paying off the lien. In Arizona, parties who have an interest in a house can redeem up the point of the finalization of the foreclosure action, even if the three year redemption period had already expired.

> I don't think there is a way to determine if a decedent has "close" (which is a pretty difficult term to figure out) relatives.

I don't actually need to determine that. 

Here is the idea. Let's say I have a spreadsheet of 2,000 liens, with property addresses and the names of the owners of record (dead or alive). If there was an online service where I could upload that spreadsheet, and that would return to me a list of 20 dead people listed by the county as the property owners, that would be great for me. I would then bid on those 20 liens, get 10 of them. My working assumption is that ONE of those 10 has no close relatives. I do NOT need to know in advance which of the ten that one is. Sometime down the line, 9 of those liens would be redeemed, and I will end up with one house, and I would be extatic.

The problem I am having now is that I don't know of a service that would take that spreadsheet of 2,000 combos of property addresses and names of owners of records, and, for a reasonable fee, return me a list 20 names of dead people among those 2,000.

If you have been thinking about starting an online business but haven't found a good idea yet, the above service, if it doesn't already exist, maybe one worth pursuing.

Thanks John for the tip. I googled skip tracing service as you suggested, and also bulk skip tracing and batch skip tracing. I found a few services, most of which have been referred to in the https://www.realestateskills.c... article.

I tried either a few or all of them. I don't remember as I did that five months ago. The ones I tried seemed geared toward traditional real estate investors. You input several house addresses, and they try to tell you who lives there and/or who owns them and their phone number.

That's great for traditional real estate investors who try to contact several property owners to see whether or not they can work out a deal. But that doesn't really serve my purpose. Of course, if I manage to contact a property owner, it does tell me that the owner is still alive. But when I get a voicemail and my voicemail isn't returned, I have no idea whether the owner is dead, or my voicemail was listened to by someone who is behind on his property taxes and doesn't want to be bugged about it.

Maybe I could find better scripts of voicemails to leave so that the living return my call. But, ideally, what I would like to find is a service where I upload owner names and/or property addresses in bulk (ideally in by uploading an Excel or LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet), and which will return information about whether or not the owner is dead or alive. Even if that information is far from being accurate. For example, identifying 1% of the dead as such would be great. Identifying 10% of the dead as such would be terrific.

Thanks @Chris Seveney for your suggestion.

I have called the county and spoken to someone in the Treasurer's office and someone in the Assessor's office. Both told me that their department doesn't do environmental studies on properties, and suggested to talk to the Planning & Zoning / Developmental Service. That service not only told me that their department doesn't do environmental studies, but that no department in the county government does.

> What was the prior use of the property that is giving you a cause for concern?

Other than a fence and barb wire around the property, the property has never been developed. Which in itself is a red flag for commercial land close within walking distance of a highway. But I am not really concerned about the property being worthless. That ship has mostly sailed the day I bought the lien. Even though if I knew for sure that it is worthless, I would stop subtaxing it and wouldn't bother paying a lawyer to foreclose on it. 

As I stated in my original post, the major red flag is that I got the lien, in an online auction, at 16%, the maximum interest rate in a bid down state (Arizona). Which means there was little to no competition for it. I bought tens of tax liens certificates in online auctions in Arizona over several years, and got the vast majority of them at interest rates between 0% and 4%, inclusive. By way of comparison, the same year I bought the lien on the 36 acres parcel of commercial land being discussed here at 16%, I bought a lien on a double wide mobile home affixed to a permanent foundation in some remote Arizona town, and I got that one at 0%.

The bulk of the property is not in a flood zone. But the edges are in a flood zone, and there is no road access to the property during floods. I hope, but doubt, that that's what turned off other investors.