Tuesday 25 December 2012

Things to contemplate when getting tax liens online

By Dale Poyser


Make your mind up if Tax Liens Are For You

Even before you decide to get involved with tax lien certificates, be aware of the risks as well as the rewards.

You need to understand some typical terms and methods like bidding down the interest, bidding on the premium, bidding on the ownership and redemption periods. Once you have a basic grasp of the basics of investing in tax liens, you should decide if this is something that you could be passionate about.

If you determine that Tax Lien Investing is something you would like, read on!

Search The Web For Good Tax Lien Websites

This is actually the easy part. 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". For example, if I wanted to invest in a county in Florida I would type in "Florida Tax Collector" in the Google search engine.

This step will give you a lot of results to filter through.

Sign up With some Tax Lien Websites

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

You will be required to provide information such as your social security number or EIN (Employer Identification Number) if you will be purchasing the liens through a corporation. 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

There are quite a few ways to bid during tax lien sales auctions. In the cases where more than one investor wants to bid on the same property, one of the following five methods is used.

Depending on the laws of the county, the bid winner will be determined by one of the five methods below. Bid Down the Interest.with this bid method, the investor willing to accept the lowest interest rate wins. In some cases the interest rate can go as low as 0%, but this is rare.

Premium.With this method investors are fighting to see who will pay the most for the lien. 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 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 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 this bidder refuses the lien, bid ticket number two may then bid. Bidder 1 will have to wait until all the other bidders have had a chance to bid before his or her turn comes up again. The bidding process continues in this sequential way until all the liens have been presented.

Bid Down the Ownership. This method is used in Iowa and a few other states, the investor willing to purchase the lien for the lowest percent of ownership on the property will be awarded the lien. For example, an investor may decide to take a lien on only 85% of the property. 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. Liens that are not purchased at the auction are turned over to the county. Some states allow "over the counter" purchases of liens not sold at auction.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment