All Forum Posts by: Kevin Nichols

My banker said it's iffy since the 2nd dwelling is not an ADU. So, I'm considering just applying for a commercial loan now instead of residential.

I have an opportunity to buy a parcel that contains a triplex and an additional SFH on it. Separate meter, separate address from the triplex.

The gray area is whether the Fannie Mae appraisal will be approved.  My bank said they can't confirm 100% because of the uniqueness of the property.

Any experience with this?  

@Bryce Davis I've bought several lots and homes in my county.  Per my attorney:  "mortgages lose their lien unless the delinquent tax collector made an error and didn’t give the bank(s) notice."

Never had any issues with previous lien holders.

@Camille K.

I had the same questions before I started going to them.  There is an issue with title insurance when you buy lien properties.

This is the language I received from my attorney:

"The only issue is if the tax collector did not give notice to all owners and that can happen when someone died owning the property and no estate was ever done. It is always a gamble but you do get your money back with interest. One lingering issue is that title insurance companies will not issue title insurance on a tax sale property unless 10 years has elapsed or unless you do a quiet title action. If you are looking to turn around and sell the property, that may be a problem if you buyer is getting mortgage financing. The lender always wants title insurance. I have been able to get title insurance when there was clearly only one defaulting owner and we got him to sign a quit claim deed."

But yes...a bank may pay taxes in order to not lose their interest/position in the property.

@Camille K. . Tax liens supercede any prior liens.  So if you bought a tax lien on a parcel that had a mortgage or other liens, those previous liens are wiped out.

That's why banks make often pay any delinquent taxes on properties they mortgages on...even if the parcel owner doesn't pay.

@Camille K. I'm not familiar with the Spartanburg market.  

From what I can tell about Rock Hill, there are a lot of empty lots.  Many of them are vacant in the city for a reason...zoning issues, building issues, etc.  Some lots don't have enough street frontage for zoning requirements to build houses on.  Stuff like this, you would have to apply for a variance to build on.

I look at Rock Hill like this....most of the gentrifying hoods in my city...a lot would cost $10K to $15K.  If I find a lot and bid on it...less than $10K, I'm doing OK.

I don't know how busy your auction will be, but we had about 200 bidders...and all the popular parcels were bid super high.

I bought 2 vacant lot liens....one for $2000 and one for $1000.   

The possible rental house parcels I wanted were bid up very close to market value....a very risky choice especially since you don't get to inspect them before buying.  

Keep in mind some of those parcels will be paid off soon and the bidders may still not get the properties.

Yes..prepare a list of Tax IDs you want to bid on.  

In York county, the list is alphabetical by owners name and you'll get a final list the day of the auction when you register.

Bid increments in York County were by the $100s.  It sometimes get's very petty when you have 2 bidders interested in the same property.

In York County, you could bring your laptop.  Make sure to bring an extension cord and set next to a receptacle.  Also, York county had wifi, but who knows about Spartanburg.

Make sure your bid on properties that are "buildable."  I bought a lot in Rock Hill with a small stream next to it and is not buildable.  I think I'll end up paying the guy's taxes for him and then getting my money back from the county.  I'll lose a little in transaction fees, but not a lot.

Sale has passed, I know.  But I attend them yearly.

I download all the 118,000 parcels from the county website in a Shapefile format, get their long/lat coordinates and then cross reference with the tax sale properties.  

It basically takes about 30 minutes to complete the process and then at the end, I import into a private Google map.

This is this years York county list:  

https://drive.google.com/open?...

Thx,

Kevin

Hi:

I live in Rock Hill, SC and have attended a few of the York County tax sales.  This is my method of operations:

1.) A few weeks before the sale, the county puts out a list in PDF format.  It sucks because in the coming weeks, property owners will pay off their taxes and all the properties you are salivating over will not be available...so don't even look at that list.  :) 

2.) A few days before the tax sale, the final list comes out in PDF format.  This is the list to look at.

3.) I downloaded 118,000 tax parcels from the county website in a data dump, in ShapeFile format and opened in QGIS software, a freeware GIS software you can get online.  The tax IDs were in the data, but not the longitude/latitude.  So when I opened the 118,000 parcels in QGIS, I used geospatial tools to get the centroids (center of each parcel) and then used long/lat plugin in QGIS and converted each centroid to a longititude/latitude coordinate set.

4.) I then took the tax sale PDF from the county and copied it and moved it into an Excel spreadsheet.

5.) I then took the 118,000 ALL parcels in the county data and exported it out into an Excel file also.

6.) I made 2 sheets in one Excel file:  One sheet is "All" and the other sheet is "tax sale" . I then made a "Final" sheet.

7.) I cross referenced the tax sale sheet with the All sheet and that gave me the long/latitude data for each available tax sale property.  

8.) So..."finally," I had a clean list of the tax sale properties with long/lat data.  

9.) I then opened Google maps and created a private Google map of each available parcel.  

I used that map to find properties I wanted and also took my laptop, extension cord, etc. to the sale and would pull open the map and see each property as it was auctioned off.

The auctions are fast...you have to be prepared to bid fast.

York County takes business checks also...so I was able to pay for the liens with my business checks.

Here is my final map:  

https://drive.google.com/open?...

Maybe this helps...maybe not.

Thx,

Kevin

The agent pays for leads through the Zillow "Premier Agent" program.  I think that makes up about 65-70% of zillow's revenue.

Like the other poster above, I think there was a communication break down.  I would had asked more questions of the agent and indicated early own there was no need for a buyer's agent.