Reading Section, Township, and Range: for example, what the heck?
PT E1/2 NE1/4 SE1/4 … SEC-07 TWN-02 RNG-04 BLK 000
After you purchase a lien (i.e., pay a year’s worth of property tax left unpaid by the owner), the County will forecloses the property (an action against the owner) if the owner fails to pay for about three years running. You may only have paid and so hold a lien on one of those years. The County will tell you how much you have to pay if you want to buy out the other tax lienholder, but you won’t know there are other liens on the property, which can make it impossible to obtain warrantied title to it. You don’t want to put more money in in order to get a tax deed only to later find something like that out. Here are a couple of ideas on how to prevent an unwanted surprise.
Once the County has told you that the tax has gone unpaid and the tax deed can be yours (they probably send you a letter giving you a year to put up or shut up): Before paying for conveyance of a tax deed from the County to you, you could get the property title certified for roughly $2,000, here: Tax Title Services or with a local real estate attorney (the County can probably recommend one), or at some similar firm.
But you can just sell your tax deed without certifying title to the property (actually what you do is quit your claim to the unpaid tax that is now owed to you because you paid it). The buyer then just has you out of the picture. They don’t have a warrantied/certified title. So once the requisite number of years has gone by and you see by your records that the County will probably be contacting you that the tax has gone unpaid for this or that property, you could begin advertising that you will probably be selling your tax deed. If you are lucky you can have a buyer lined up before the County requires you to decide on it. If so, with an agreed price agreed upon with your buyer, you can pay the County for your tax deed, and then once you have the tax deed in hand you can meet the buyer at the County offices, collect payment from them and file a Quit Claim with the County that relinquished your property rights to the buyer.
Read more: Investing in Property Tax Liens | Investopedia
NTLA advises dividing the face amount of the delinquent tax lien by the market value of the property. If the ratio is above 4%, potential buyers should stay away from that property. Furthermore, there could also be other liens on the property that will prevent the bidder from taking ownership of it.
Every piece of real estate in a given county with a tax lien is assigned a number within its respective parcel. Buyers can look for these liens by number in order to obtain information about them from the county (this can often be done online). For each number, the county has the property address, the name of the owner, the assessed value of the property, the legal description, and a breakdown of the condition of the property and any structures located on the premises.
Read more: Investing in Property Tax Liens | Investopedia
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