Friday, January 25, 2013

Steps To Purchase Tax Liens Online

By Dale Poyser


Decide if you want to be a tax lien investor

Even before you choose to tax on tax lien investing, you should understand the rewards involved as well as the risks.

You need to understand a few common things about tax lien investing, like the difference between a tax deed and tax lien county or state and what bidding on the premium is. Once you have a good understanding of the basics of tax lien investing, you need to decide if this type of investing is for you and suits your personality.

If buying tax liens are in your future, proceed to the next chapter!

Find A Good Website For Purchasing Tax Liens

Finding a tax lien website is actually quite simple. Tax lien sales are processed at the courthouse so you should probably start by finding the website of tax collector for county you want to invest in.

Go to the google search engine and type in the state that you want to invest in, followed by "tax collector". If I wanted to buy tax liens in California, I would type in "California Tax Collector" in the Google search engine.

Using google will turn up a lot of results for tax lien investing and allow you to even sign up for a few auctions from the comfort of your couch.

Register With Online Tax Lien Directories

Note: You will only be able to register in certain counties as not all counties have online tax lien sales.

Be ready to fill in personal information about yourself such as your social security number, bank routing info or credit card info for funding and payment purchases, this is normal. You may also need to fund or provide funding for your account which will be used to purchase the Liens if you win a successful bid.

Understand the Rules Of Bidding For Tax Liens Online

Understand that different counties have different rules for bidding on a tax lien. One of several bidding methods will be used if more than one investor bids on the same property.

Depending on the laws of the county, the bid winner will be determined by one of the five methods below. Bid Down the Interest.this is where several investors negotiate to see who will accept the lowest interest rate among all the bidders. In some cases the interest rate can go as low as 0%, but this is rare.

Premium.Here investors (bidders) bid on the face value of the lien or premium. Note that the amount bid over the original value of the lien may not earn interest. Colorado is one state that does this.

Random Selection.bidders are selected randomly when this method is used. It is common for a computer to do the random selection, however in smaller counties other methods may be used. Nevada is a state that uses Random selection.

Rotational Selection. With this method, the first lien will be offered to the investor holding bid ticket number one. If this bidder refuses the lien, bid ticket number two may then bid. The first bidder cannot bid again until all other bidders have had an opportunity to bid or pass on a lien. The next lien then goes to the next number in line.

Bid Down the Ownership. A few states use this method of bidding on the ownership. The winner is the investor willing to accept the least % ownership on the lien. An example of this would be a case where the winning bidder only owns 60% of a tax lien. If the lien is not redeemed, the bid winner only receives 85% ownership of the property with the remaining 15% owned by the original owner. In actuality, very few investors will bid on liens for less than full ownership to the property.

So in the even there are multiple bidders on the same tax lien, the random selection method will be used. Liens not sold at auction are considered "struck" (or sold) to the entity (usually the county) conducting the auction. Some states allow "over the counter" purchases of liens not sold at auction.




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