All Forum Posts by: Abdenour Achab

I live in California, and bought a tax lien certificate (technically a Certificate of Purchase) on vacant commercial land in Arizona, sight unseen, at an online auction. It's 36 acres, assessed at about $100,000, and walking distance from a highway.

The assessor's website does value the improvements at about half the assessed value. But there is no visible building on Google Maps, and Xome.com states 0 square feet for the structure.

Big red flag: I got it for 16%, the maximum interest rate in an interest rate bid down state. Which means I may well have been the only person foolish enough to bid on it, among the billions of people with internet access.

On the other hand, the fact that the owner didn't pay taxes since 2018 is not a big red flag. The land belongs to a partnership, and the (or at least a) main guy in the partnership died a couple of years ago at age 90. And the partnership had been paying property taxes for 16 years prior to 2018.

I own the lien in my own name. The redemption period has expired four months ago. And, two days ago, I mailed out the 30 day notices to start foreclosure. My suspicion is, the dead guy won't bother to redeem the property.

My main concern is environmental contamination. Before buying the lien, I checked the EPA superfund website, and their map of known toxic sites. Neither showed any red flag for the property, or any other property within a mile radius.

If you were the lien owner, how would you go about this?

1) Would you have a lawyer start a foreclosure in your own name?

2) Would you register an Arizona LLC to do business in California, transfer the lien to the LLC, then have the LLC's lawyer foreclose in the name of the LLC. And keep paying $800 a year franchise tax?

3) If you went the LLC route, how much money you would put into the LLC to significantly reduce the risk the EPA and Arizona's environmental agency pierce the corporate veil. If I remember correctly, there is an insurance company insuring against the risk of having the corporate veil pierced. But they require following a lot of corporate formalities, and funding the LLC with $50,000. $800 a year in franchise tax fees is my no means sufficient to buy liability protection from a determined litigant.

4) Would you hire an environmental testing company to test the land (to which you have no legal access - but I doubt the dead guy would call the cops on you) once the foreclosure process has progressed well enough, but before it's conclusion, so that you tell the lawyer to stop foreclosure in case some major contamination is discovered?

5) Would you get legal residence in Venezuela, which has no extradition treaty with the United States, to escape with your money if and when you receive a million dollars bill from the EPA?

What else would you do to mitigate the risk of environmental contamination that would cost more than the land is worth.

Note that I am not concerned about minor contaminations that can be fixed for under $25,000. Just major stuff that would end up costing me more than the cleaned up land would be worth.

I have been buying tax liens certificates in Arizona for several years, with the hope of acquiring one good property every couple of years at a very good price, with no success so far. 

For relatively large counties that list over 10,000 liens two weeks before the auction, by the time I have narrowed down the list, I have at most a couple of days left before the bidding deadline.

I suspect I would have more success if, let's say among the 100 properties I am considering, there was a way of determining which owners died recently. I did a Google search, but the methods I found were designed to find out whether some specific John Doe has died, and it seems like it would take more time than I have before the bidding deadline to determine who, among a list of 100 homeowners (or former, now dead, homeowners) is dead, and who is alive.

What's the most efficient way of determining who died recently in Arizona? Something that, if I had a 100 names, I could, within a couple of days, determine which one, two or three of them died recently. The method doesn't have to be fool proof. Let's say that, among the 100, 5 had actually died. If the method you suggest will help me figure out that ONE of the 5 had died recently, that would be great. The method doesn't have to lead to all 5.

Also, I don't want to rely on notices to administer the estate of so and so to determine who is dead. For those situations, there will be an estate administrator who is motivated to get close to market value for the house. I am interested in those who die without close relatives getting involved in selling the assets through probate.

Thank you very much @Andy Mirza for the link. I did find in it what I was looking for.

Abdenour

Thanks @Chris Seveney for your reply.

> I have not sent one in California so I do not have one I can send you.

Could you email me one that you sent in another state, after of course redacting the borrower specific information? 

Thanks in advance.

I tried to include my email address in the above request, but BiggerPockets won't let me. So, I will send you a separate private message with the same request.

I hold a promissory note secured by a real property in California. The owner is in the process of refinancing, and the refinance mortgage company is asking me for a Demand for Payment letter.

1) Do you know of any good template letter to use?

2) I have NoteSmith Pro 2016. I am familiar, but not proficient with it. I was able to use it to get the payoff amount. Is NoteSmith Pro 2016 capable of generating the demand letter? If so, how do I do that? Support for the product has expired.

3) If I remember correctly, from past readings a decade or so ago, I can add a $75 reconveyance fee to the balance, interest and late payments. Is that still the case?

I own two 2018 Tax Lien Sale Certificates of Purchase in Arizona, and I read the law governing the 30 day notice before the foreclosure at  https://www.azleg.gov/ars/42/18202.htm , as well as the law governing the foreclosure itself at https://www.azleg.gov/ars/42/18201.htm

1) Let's say a property is owned by John and Jane Doe, both living at the property itself, and receiving all their mail at the property itself. Do I send a single letter to both, a separate letter for each, or three letters: one addressed to both, and one to each of them ?

2) Let's say the liens were sold on February 21, 2018. If I understand the law correctly, I can start the foreclosure on February 22, 2021. Does that mean I can send them the 30 day notices as early as September 1, 2020 ? And, if I do so, will I then have a very narrow time window to start the foreclosure, i.e. between February 22, 2021 and 180 or 179 days after September 1, 2020 ?

3) If I send the notices and the owners decide to neither redeem the properties, nor deed them to me, and I hire a lawyer in February 2021 to start the foreclosure, and provide him with proof that I sent the notices. Can the lawyer start the foreclosure on my behalf without re-sending the 30 days notices, or will the lawyer have to re-send the 30 day notices anyway ?

I am in the process of preparing a deed for a recording in Arizona. I used LibreOffice Draw, then converted it to PDF.

Section 4 of  https://www.azleg.gov/ars/11/00480.htm states:

"Each instrument dated and executed on or after January 1, 1991, .... shall have a print size no smaller than ten point type."

The county recorder states: "10 point (not font) type is required by law"

How do I make sure the point size is at least 10 points in either LibreOffice Draw, Acrobat Reader or from the printout ?

Was LibreOffice Draw the wrong way to go ?

Hi @Marco Bario,

I listened to various gurus regarding land trusts about 17 years ago, but I never used one. 

According to my lawyer, given the specifics of the situation regarding the property, an LLC is a much better option to go than a trust.

> Option 1 with the state theLLC is registered on is the proper way to hold title in the LLC

@Charity Skore , do you mean the grantee should be: ABCDE, LLC, a New Mexico LLC
Or should it be: ABCDE, LLC, New Mexico

Hi Lance,

The property is in Arizona. So, it seems to me like the Arizona law is what should govern the issue of what needs to be on the deed.

Abdenour