All Forum Posts by: Jessie Griffin

@Jonathan Williams, coming across this past post. I've got two properties in LA that were estates and essentially abandoned. How soon did you have to wait to start the quiet title process? May I ask who you used and were you happy with the results?

@Toby Joseph I've been doing my research on all that are out there, but can't tell if iPostal1 you have to pay per scan? It looks like $2/6 pages each scan. Is that right? 

I have searched far and wide and cannot find anything on how to get a property officially declared "blighted" (or abandoned), other than New Orleans. I am trying to reduce the redemption period to 18 months from 3 years, but was told by the title clearing company they need it to be declared blighted first. Does anyone know how to do this? Do I need to call the code enforcer or file something for legal action? Properties are located in Iberia, St. Mary, and Caddo parishes. Many thanks for any responses. 

@Deepika Tandon and @Roger Gelpey to find out the total back taxes owed on the property you can go to the county's tax collector website. Lee County is: https://www.leetc.com/ncp/search_criteria.asp?sear...

The assessed value by the property appraiser's website is usually a good indicator of what the property is worth. Typically it's about 80% of the top market value in a seller's market. Land typically goes to the certificate holder unless it's in an up and coming neighborhood or is a large parcel. To apply for the tax deed, you can typically expect pay at least 3 years of taxes (so triple what you paid for the certificate) plus a couple hundred dollars in application and advertising fees to the county. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions I might be able to answer.

Howdy Quinn - I assume this may be your first purchase, and if so, Congrats on that end! Liens are super exciting. I personally have not done this, but it is a great niche strategy. The only problem is if it goes to auction and someone else is willing to pay more for the property then you've done all the hard work. The tax deed sale is fair game so if the starting bid is $2,500 and someone bids $2,600 they will get the property unless you bid more and are the highest bidder of course. You would just pay the difference between the starting price and your max bid since you've already paid all of the fees and other liens off (included in the starting bid). Are you familiar with the tax deed sales? Let me know if you have questions about this process. 

One thing to note, watch your mailbox carefully. Usually when the county sends you something, you'll have 1-3 days to respond. If you miss this window it can possibly forfeits your fees paid and/or sends your application to the back of the line if you want to re-apply. Usually the county will send you a bill for all the advertising, fees, etc. that needs to be paid pronto in order to move forward. I would love to see what properties you purchased the liens on if you'd like to private message me with the county and addresses?

Howdy - We just purchased our first short-term rental that is in mine and my wife's names. We will be collecting tax and reporting it each month. We want to run everything through our business and found out the government will not accept our tax application if the title on the property is not the business. We need to transfer the deed into the business name. I assume this should this be done with a Warranty Deed and not a Quit Claim Deed so not to cloud the title later on? If so, can we process the warranty deed paperwork ourselves or do you need a lawyer? LegalZoom wants $250+. This seems quite silly since we are just transferring to ourselves essentially with no money exchanged. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Howdy @Sophie Wang,

These are all great questions! Let me first preface saying that all the information provided in my comments below are only for Florida tax certificates/liens as every state is different. I assume you will be bidding on Florida certificates, but saw you are in Colorado so just making sure. Please see my comments below your questions and let me know what else I can help you with.

1. Does an investor get priority right to purchase subsequent years of tax liens after he/she made the initial purchase? Will the interest rate for sebsequent years 18% or whatever rate the investor bid for the first year's lien?

Each year is treated as a new certificate so to answer your first question, no; you can buy 2017's certificate, but next year anyone can bid for 2018. The subsequent taxes (any taxed unpaid after your purchase) are free game and will not affect your certificate - unless of course they file for a tax deed after two years and pay your certificate off - yay! 

2. Does florida allow multiple liens on one property? For example, there is a property, investor A purchased tax liens on it for year #1, but did not want to purchase the lien for year #2, in this case does the county bundle the lien plus interest for year #1 with the amount for year #2 and offer it for bidding again in year #2 and be purchased by investor B, and investor A got redeemed, or does the county allows A and B hold liens on the same property for different years?

The later situation you stated is correct. The county allows both investor A and B to hold separate liens (certificates) on the same property for different years. Investor A will keep collecting the original said interest rate until the certificate is paid. Investor B will collect their interest rate (whatever they bid) until their certificate is paid. 

3. If a property has liens purchased by investor A and B for different years, do A and B have the same right to force foreclose when the 2 year redemption period is met? Either of them can pay off the other and foreclose? Can the lien holder bid at the foreclosure auction too if he or she wants the property?

Yes, investors A and B both have a right to apply for the tax deed (which will initiate the auction to foreclose on the property as you stated). The difference is if Investor A purchased the tax year ahead of Investor B, then Investor A can apply for the tax deed one year sooner. Investor B has to wait their full two years from the "purchase date" of the certificate as well. Either of them can pay off the other and foreclose. Now, Investor A may not want to apply for the tax deed right at two years and they have the right to wait up to 7 years from purchase date to apply for the tax deed. During that time, any of the other investors after that can apply and essential will pay off Investor A's certificate. During that time, Investor A will keep the same interest rate each year. Interesting side note, if you research any properties that have expired tax certificates, where the lien holder did not apply for the tax deed within 7 years, this is a HUGE red flag that the property is not worth it. 

For your last question, yes, anyone can bid on the property during the auction. The Investor who applied for the tax deed basically starts the auction at the minimum price since they have paid for all the past due taxes from other years, plus all the fees. If no one bids against them, they automatically get the property. This RARELY happens unless it's a useless piece of land. A good example would be to go back and look at the Pinellas County tax deed auctions for any land in St Petersburg on the South Side. Another example is Hernando County, where Brooksville and Weeki Wachi have a bunch of developers that go bankrupt and land is not bid on since it's not worth the starting bid. If you do want to bid on the property once it goes up for auction, this is a separate process and website from the annual tax certificate sale. You will need to sign up for an account and make a minimum deposit before bidding. 

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any further questions. Cheers.

@Yanling Wu, the Hedge Funds have more money than they know what to do with so they try to just house their funds in anything with a guaranteed return, even if it's only 0.25%. Since they can always file for the tax deed and get their money back plus interest, it is a no brainer for them and it's much more legal than laundering their money. I work in a bank and see first hand how they filter their earnings through the system in creatively various ways. They do indeed have a system that cannot be beat. They set up hundreds of thousands of different LLCs in order to do massive group bidding and get more chances of winning. For example, one HF could have 250,000 LLCs set up (not an exaggeration) and therefore can have 250,000 bids in the pot for 0.25%. If there are 50,000 other investors bidding 0.25%, who do you think will win? When one of these LLCs wins, they simply transfer the certificate to the main HF holdings. Most of the FL counties will actually show you how many bids were on each property after the auction. It's quite interesting. You can see when an HF has bid on it because one property will have 200 bids and the other will have 275,000 bids. Example from Pinellas County's 2017 auction below. The bids Submitted were 449k on the first and only 213 on the second. 

My List

Adv No.

Batch

Parcel No.

Face Amount

Tax Year

Bids

Submitted

Action

In regards to your Tax Deed question, it really all depends on the property and county. Orange and Broward counties in FL have so many bidders, they usually go well above the assessed value. If you look more towards smaller, more rural areas like St Lucie and Escambia, then you can get fairly cheap. Just do your research and don't bid more than your original bottom line. Remember also if you plan to sell the property within 4 years, you'll need to clear the title which is about $2,800 with a title clearing service and expect that to take anywhere between 30-60 days.

@Yanling Wu Funny you asked about this as I was just discussing with another member. This last year was horrible. I bid on over 2,000 properties and didn't get a single one. It seems the last 2-3 years have just gotten worse. I have started to steer away from Florida's tax certificates since the hedge funds buy nearly all of them for 0.25% interest and bumped all of the little guys out of the game. I now invest more in tax deeds (where you own and take possession of the property immediately). These, of course, are much more of an up front investment and lots more research and work. I just assume come this May, there won't be many high interest tax certificates available again. 

Hi @Simmy Ahluwalia, thanks for the response. I was planning on getting a hard money loan for 80% of the purchase price and re-financing after the remodel. I have $25k of my own money and would need about another $35k for the down payment and closing costs. This is where I get stuck in needing a second loan to fund the purchase. Is your company able to provide more than the 80% loan? I am certainly open to any ideas or creative financing as this is a hard to come by property in this area and already has tenants in place to cover the loan payments in the beginning.