Monday, January 28, 2013

Here are some suggestions on how to buy Tax Liens Online

By Dale Poyser


Find out If Tax Lien Investing is Something you would enjoy

Even before you choose to tax on tax lien investing, you should learn about the pros and cons

You must understand some typical terms and methods like bidding down the interest, bidding on the premium, bidding on the ownership and redemption periods. When you get to the point where you have a good understanding of tax lien investing you should then determine if this suits your personality.

If you decide that this is something you want to get into, then proceed to Tip #2.

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.

Another option, use the famous google search engine and enter the county that you are interested 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

Not all counties give you the ability to purchase tax liens online, so you will only be able to register in certain counties.

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 might need to set up an account and or provide a deposit which will be required if you want to be a bidder. There could be a minimum requirement to register as a bidder. Don't worry it is refundable.

Learn The Ways to bid on Tax Liens

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. In some counties the additional premium does not earn any interest and may not be refundable. Colorado is one state that does this.

Random Selection.bidders are selected at random with this type of method. In most cases a computer does the random selection but this can vary. Nevada uses the random selection method.

Rotational Selection. With this method, the first lien will be offered to the investor holding bid ticket number one. If the first bidder passes on the lien, the next bid ticket holder gets priority of the lien. However, bidder number one will not be offered another lien until their ticket number comes up again in the rotation. Once bidder 1 bids, bidder 2 gets to bid, then bidder 3, then 4 and so on...then back at 1 and repeat.

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. Not many investors will buy liens in states that use the ownership method.

So in case where multiple investors are bidding on the same property, the random selection process will be used instead. If a tax lien is not purchased at an auction, the county will take possession of it. Liens not sold at auction will then be available for "over the counter" purchasing.




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