Odds are that a tax-redeeming owner will only have to reimburse tax deed buyer for taxes paid plus nominal interest.

Robert  all the on line sellers of information.. are teachers and your the student.. they sell their advice and or information.. they are not going to give it away.. although the industry has all mirrored itselfeach guru or information seller acts the exact same way.give something for free.. then do a 3 day training for a nominal amountall with the goal to sell their full package of info for whatever the market will bear.. the more successful sellers of info.. can get 30 to 50k from clients for their info.. lessor known or those with smaller marketing budgets may only get 3 to 15k.there is no real secret sauce to real estate.. it seems to be an industry over run with the idea that you can get seriously rich in a short amount of time.. ( which is probably hyperbole)  well not probably it is.you can go on E bay and buy any of the guru's written material for pennies.. you may want to try that.but other than that your experience is what the industry is... bait and switch high pressure sales tactics and selling the same information that has been around for decades... think of MLM  and how they market those companies.. this is the same back end marketing comp;anies fronting for these RE  information sellers.. same process's  they are tried and proven to work on the mass's.

Also some appraisers and brokers/agents do BPO's on properties which is an opinion of value for a nominal price ( Usually a 100 or below for average).If not many sales are available be conservative in value.

You have to remember that most seasoned agents are not jumping at the bit to work with investors because the commission (especially after splitting with their brokerage) is nominal for the amount of work it becomes.

I am helping a friend get his handyman business started and working on a few of his bigger jobs (for a nominal consulting fee lol).

'Ask for everything' is rookie advice yelled from the back of a short bus.I nominate this for quote of the week.

Mountain America has an investment loan at 90% LTV.With nominal returns, your primary focus should be the property itself.  

@Mohammed Alam I second the nomination for @Russell Brazil. 

1) Put 400K in passive investment yielding 5% with no further work required.2) Wait about 37 years without touching it.3) Principal will now be approximately 2.4 million and should kick off 10k/mo at that 5% rate.Watch out for inflation (hope that's a 5% real return, not nominal)If you found yourself not liking that plan, you may want to get realistic and realize a few things:1) 30% returns, while not impossible, are unrealistic2) Getting to 10K/mo cash flow will be anything but "passive" 3) "The path of least resistance" won't get you there.

Rather than start our supply list over, we stuck with it and it was not a smooth process and through the process I also learned the savings by going to a big box versus local suppliers results in only a nominal to zero savings and not worth the extra hassle.The biggest lesson learned is that compiling fixtures lists is time consuming and unless you're engaging a designer to spec materials and fixtures to be used, like I do on my commercial projects, you need to be better prepared than I was.