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Tax Liens Vs. Tax Deeds: Which is the Best Investment?

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:36:54 +0000

Frequently I?m asked the question what is more profitable, investing in tax lien certificates or tax deeds. Whether tax lien investing or tax deed investing is better for you depends on the state that you live in and what your goals are. If you are looking to pick up property under market value than you are better off with tax deeds than with tax liens. If you do your homework and purchase tax liens on good properties, the chances of foreclosure are slim. And in some states, even if the lien is not redeemed, you may not be able to get the property.

In the State of Florida for example, if your lien does not redeem during the redemption period, the property goes into a tax deed sale in order to satisfy your lien. If you did your due diligence and purchased a lien on a decent property, in order to get the property, you will have to bid against other investors at the deed sale. So if you want to invest in Florida, and you are interested in obtaining property, then deed investing is the way to go, not lien investing. If, however, you are not interested in owning property, but just want to get a higher return on your money than you could in the bank, then tax liens are the way to go. In Florida, as long as you do your due diligence, you won?t have to worry about the possibility of owning the property.

If you live on the west coast, you might want to consider investing in tax deeds instead of tax liens. That?s because the states on the west coast are deed states and not lien states. Yes, you could travel to the closest lien state, but that would eat into your profits. And yes, you could invest online but then you have to deal with increased competition and higher costs. Also, would you purchase a property that you did not physically look at first? Even though with tax lien investing, you are not purchasing the property, you?re only buying a lien on the property; your lien is only as good as the property that guarantees it.

If you are interested in either owning the property or getting a very good return on your investment and you live in or near a redeemable deed state, than you should consider investing in redeemable deeds. Redeemable deeds are kind of in-between tax liens and tax deeds. You purchase the tax deed at the sale, but there is a redemption period in which the previous owner can come back and redeem the deed from you. They have to pay a pretty hefty penalty in most redeemable deed states in order to do so, and the penalty is on the total amount that you bid at the sale. In Texas the penalty is 25% and in Georgia it?s 20%. Not a bad rate of return! Another great thing about redeemable deeds is that the larger counties with bigger cities can have a tax sale a few times a year or even every month. That?s better than waiting for a tax sale only once a year as in most states that sell regular tax deeds or tax liens.

If you live in a state that sells tax liens, and you are not interested in purchasing property, but are interested in investing your money safely at a high rate of return, than tax lien investing is the best choice for you. To find out more about tax lien and tax deed investing, go to www.TaxLienInvestingBasics.com.

Joanne Musa works with people who want to build an extremely profitable portfolio of tax lien certificates or tax deeds FAST. She is the author of the Tax Lien Investing Basics system for learning how to invest in tax lien certificates and tax deeds for maximum profit, and founder of Tax Lien Consulting LLC, a consulting company specializing in tax lien investing coaching and education. Go to www.taxlienlady.com for more information about tax lien investing.

Five Mistakes New Investors Make When Buying Tax Lien Certificates and Tax Deeds

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:43:46 +0000

Here are some mistakes that can lower your rate of return in your tax lien or tax deed portfolio. These are mistakes that I, or one of my clients, or another investor that I know, has made in the process of investing of tax liens or tax deeds. I?m sharing them with you so that you do not make the same mistakes that we did when we were just beginning to invest in tax lien certificates and/or tax deeds. Hopefully you can learn from our mistakes.Mistake#1: Doing your due diligence too soon before the tax sale.New investors are always eager to get started. They frequently want to start researching the tax sale properties right away, as soon as they can get the tax sale list. I also made this mistake when I first started; until I realized that I was wasting my time doing due diligence on properties that were never going to be sold at the tax sale. People can pay their taxes and remove their property from the tax sale list, sometime up until right before the tax sale. In my experience, at least half of the properties that are on the original tax sale list will not be there on the day of the sale. So if you start your due diligence early, many of the properties that you research will not be sold at the tax sale and you?ll be wasting your time. I?ve learned to wait until a few days before the tax sale and get an updated list from the tax collector, so that I?m only doing due diligence on the properties that are still on the list a couple of days before the tax sale. Of course if you?re going to a very large sale, you might need a week to do your due diligence, but you shouldn?t need longer than that.Mistake #2: Not doing due diligence on tax sale properties. For tax liens this may be as simple as looking at the assessment information on the property and driving by the property to take a look at it. I myself have made the error of bidding on a tax lien on the assessment information alone and not actually looking at the property. Last time I did this, I wound up with a shack that was falling apart, and it was right next to a stream. It looked like if the stream flooded it would be washed away. Because everything around it was overgrown and it was hard to see from the road, I had a real hard time finding it. But the problem was I didn?t go look at it until after I had bought the lien. I should have looked at it before I bid.Mistake #3: Not knowing the rules of the tax sale. Since every state, and in some states each county, has different rules regarding their tax sales, you need to know what they are ahead of time. I got an e-mail from a subscriber who had purchased a tax deed at an ?upset? tax sale in Pennsylvania. Later he found out that there was a $200,000 mortgage on the property that he was responsible for. He didn?t do his due diligence on the property, so he didn?t know about the lien. He thought that he was buying a deed to vacant land and he didn?t know that a new home had been built on the property, and that there was a mortgage on it. So his first mistake was not doing the proper due diligence for a tax deed property. But he also didn?t know that when you purchase a deed in the upset sale you are responsible for any liens or judgments on the property. Many counties in Pennsylvania have two different tax sales. The upset tax sale is held in the fall and the properties in that sale are sold subject to any liens or judgments on the property. Then if a property is not sold in this sale it goes to the judicial sale in the spring. The properties in the judicial sale are sold free and clear of any liens or judgments, so there is a big difference between purchasing a tax deed in the upset sale and purchasing a tax deed in the judicial sale. Know the rules of the tax sale that you are bidding at!Mistake #4: Not knowing what you are bidding at the sale.I was at a tax sale in New Jersey where a new investor was bidding on some small utility liens. In NJ the interest rate is bid down and then premium is bid on tax liens. She bid large premium (a few hundred dollars) on a small sewer lien, which she won. When I talked to her after the sale, I realized that she did not understand how premiums in NJ work. You do not get any interest on the premium or on the certificate amount. She was not aware that she was not going to get any interest on the amount that she bid at the sale. The reason that other investors were bidding big premiums on larger liens is because once they have the lien, they can pay the subsequent taxes and get the maximum

Invest in Tax Lien Certificates and Tax Deeds Tax Free

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:30:52 +0000

Did you know that you could use money from a self-directed IRA account to invest in tax lien certificates or tax deeds? I?ve interviewed retirement account specialists from two different self-directed IRA companies; EntrustCAMA and Equity Trust Company, and I?ve learned that it is possible to invest tax free in tax lien certificates and tax deeds with a self-directed IRA.

If you use money from a regular self-directed IRA account to invest in tax lien certificates or tax deeds, than your money grows tax free until you withdraw from your account after retirement. But, if you use money from a Roth self-directed IRA, and you do not take any withdrawals until retirement age ? you do not pay any taxes on your profits! So if you are using tax lien or tax deed investing as a way to save for your retirement, you need to look into this.

Although many brokerages will say that they have self-directed IRA accounts, they are not true self-directed accounts. You can only invest in anything that they sell. A true self-directed retirement account will allow you to invest in anything that is not prohibited by law. Allowable investments include real estate, tax lien certificates, tax deeds, and notes, along with other of the more usual investments. True self-directed IRA companies are prohibited to sell you investments. They can recommend types of investments that you can use your self-directed IRA for and show you how to do the paper work for them, but they are not allowed to make a commission on what you buy. There are only a handful of these companies in the country. I personally only know of three of them and I?m familiar with only two. I?ll tell you how to find out more about these two companies later.

You might be wondering if you can transfer or ?roll-over? money from your present 401k or IRA into a self-directed IRA with one of these companies. What I?ve been told from retirement account specialists is that you can only roll over money from your 401k if you are no longer working for the company that your retirement account was set up with. I know that you can roll over money from a regular IRA account into a self-directed IRA because I?ve recently done that. I took money from my IRA account with TDAmeritrade and rolled it over into a new self-directed IRA account with EntrustCAMA. It was easy to do. I was able to transfer the money when I opened my new account. I downloaded the forms that I needed from their web site and mailed them in. They took care of the rest.

You also might be wondering if there are any fees associated with opening and maintaining a self-directed IRA. Yes there are some fees, but they are minimal compared to the taxes that you would be paying the government on your investment income or capital gains. Each of these companies handles fees differently and in order to see which company would work better for you, I suggest that you visit their web site or talk to a representative.

You can find out more about EntrustCama at http://www.entrustcama.com/ and you can listen to a free teleseminar/interview with Carl Fischer of EntrustCAMA at http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/WmTmzsXs. You can find out more about Equity Trust Company at http://www.trustetc.com/ and you can listen to a free teleseminar/interview Liz Koos of Equity Trust Company at http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/WvX8Qr1Q.