All Forum Posts by: John C.

Usually the tax defaulted land sales are done through the county, more specifically the county tax collector or treasurer. Call that county office up and they could give you some info - they may not even do tax deed sales but tax liens.

Jim: Nice work on your run down house! I had to do the same thing before with bats and they eventually relocated outside in a bat house that I set up for them. Might have put their house to close to the window though because sometimes they make a racket late summer evenings. You're right, determination, and a slow focused pace gets you where you want to be.

With land I never realized any big profits until about 8 years into it. That may be a big reason why there aren't that many land investors out there because most want to see money now.

Deborah: B4Assets used to be the place to buy, then it became out of control with bidders throwing money at anything and everything. Times have changed and the auctions there are becoming more reasonable, so I've been watching. But Jim is right, check out the local offline sales, smaller counties are better to start in - big county sales like Los Angeles are zoos.

And I do have that property in Lone Pine still. Have to hold onto it for sentimental reasons, and still spend lots of time out there. I have a hand drawn map if you ever want to check it out, but you need 4x4 because parts of the road are sandy. At one time Lone Pine became our home away from home, great place and greater memories. Once while hiking up in Horseshoe Meadows (and in a thunderstorm) I saw a pack of coyotes take down a baby deer while the mother fought them all off.

There are a couple places out there that I highly recommend to stay the night, Cerro Gordo ghost town (Belshaw House), and the De La Cour ranch above the Alabamas.

Hey Richard I have that book and you can imagine my surprise when the author registered just recently on this site around the same time I did.

http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/55/topics/29886-new-investor-here-

I've watched plenty of land go for top dollar at land auctions near Parumph and Spanish Springs Ranchos. Too far out for me to get interested though, like to stay local.

Jim, one thing I've noticed is that my banks never were interested in my portfolio of land (as collateral) until I showed them all the owner financed notes that I had against them. Then they perked up a little bit. Thanks for sharing - John.

Just curious if there are any good stories out there...

I'll start -

Around early 1990's still in college and had some time to burn, was browsing books at Tower Records down in Marina Del Rey and saw something like "how to buy government land for pennies per acre." It was a small pocketbook and all yellow, government hand-outs of land sounded good where does one sign up?

But it turns out that homesteading was ended several decades earlier so I was out of luck. However, the topic of tax deed sales was briefly discussed and that stuck with me. Technically, you weren't buying from the government per se, but rather the local county tax collector.

Two years later I had graduated college and had a fine part-time job paying $7.08 hour, and, had moved out of Los Angeles and into the sticks. Luckily my new mortgage was $189/month, and I had enough left over to buy a subscription to the bi weekly newspaper. In the fine print there was noticed a tax defaulted land sale with properties ranging from $25 to $3600. (in my price range!)

Now fortunately I already had a savings of a few hundred dollars, and was able to bank a couple more pay checks before the auction. Drove about 80 miles and took my seat in the back of the courtroom on an early Monday morning. The first property up was 7.15 acres somewhere a few miles out of Lone Pine, CA. $1300 minimum bid, I squeaked out a bid, the entire room turned around and looked at me and there were no challengers - which was good because I had only brought $1400 cash. Sold for the minimum asking price.

Drove right out to take a look, liked what I saw - Mount Whitney, Lone Pine Peak, and views across the Owens dry Lake. Then a fighter plane from Ridgecrest made such a low level high speed pass that I thought the pilot was going to crash - scared the heck out of me for a second.

I really liked the fact that the land was bought and paid for in full. Taxes were reasonable about $24 a year. But above all, the gut feeling that the land was far more valuable than it cost convinced me that wealth was being built. Still have that property, but have bought and sold many more like it since.

Well that's it in a nutshell, anyone else have a story please share.

If that's what you want to do then go for it. There's probably even a thread somewhere on this site discussing how folks got started.

Hi Matt, it may sound silly but read, read, read. Get all the free stuff you can get your hands on at the library. And not just real estate books, but finance, business, and all of those flavor of the week "look at me I'm a millionaire" books. Because each of them may have one thing that you can learn from and later use. (like finding the money for deals before you need it)

Thanks guys for the welcome. Well, Dick, I've spent too much time on the internet and shuffling papers, land contracts and sometimes just doing deals via email all day long (not that there is anything wrong with that) but what happened is that I wanted to get connected again, take some time off and watch stuff grow --get my hands dirty, and, spend more time with the kids away from computers and cell phones and other distractions. (like work, :wink: )

A few weeks of putting the word out I connected with a retired guy who has 400+ acres with a creek running down the middle of his land and he is agreeable to leasing as much land as I need for $1/year. If that isn't a calling I don't know what is.

Our own property up in the high sierra is filled up already with apple, cherry, pear, and 20 other bushes like goosberries, currants, kiwis, elderberries - and I'm just about out of room here. But to answer your question it is apples primarily that I'd like to grow. And just for fun, not profit. Wholesale, bareroot trees can go for about $12 each, I figure that $501 could make a decent go of things.

Hi Darren, welcome aboard. I enjoyed reading your book a while back.

How's your clientel coping with the massive drop in real estate values? Just wondering because I do similar land banking for family and friends, and it's been stressful because I don't want to lose anyone any bit of money.

By the way, I'm about 3 hours south of you on the 395.

Just checking in, would like to network with others in the land business and perhaps get some southern ca folks interested in some high sierra cabin vacation rentals.

I invest in raw land, mostly. But dabble in other areas as well --multiple streams of income are helpful, as well as working part time.

One goal for 2009 is to get an orchard planted, right now I'm in the process of locating suitable land and have two very good leads. Other long term goals are trading one of our holdings (an old homestead near Death Valley) for some land closer to our small communities.

Anyhow, glad to be here. -John.

$8K is a chunk of change for landlocked property. Growing stuff for a farmers market is fun but you can do that at home for free. Flip on MLS and be done with it, or, get the addresses of all the neighboring properties and mail out some letters to see if anyone is interested in purchasing it.

How much are non-land locked lots going for in this area?