HOW TO BUY A HOUSE AT AN AUCTION
Want to know How to Buy a House at an Auction? Wouldn’t it be nice to get your Dream Home for 10, 20, or 30 cents on the dollar without any mortgage? Live in it. Sell it. Rent it. It’s your choice.
Today Ted Thomas, America’s authority on tax liens and tax defaulted property investing will show you how to make the American dream yours and at bargain prices.
Today I’m going to answer the question, how to buy a house at an auction. You’re going to love this. Thousands of people are searching for bargain property, and I’m going to show you how to acquire it.
My name is Ted Thomas. I’ve been around the real estate business since 1970, but the last 30 years, I’ve settled down on tax liens and tax deeds.
Why did I do that? It’s a nice solid market. It doesn’t go up and down. There are no recessions.
I’m going to give you some of the inside secrets on what goes on here. After I give you the secrets, you’re going to be saying to yourself that you want to head for an auction.
Well, at the very end of this article, I’m going to tell you about the auctions. People make two big mistakes at those auctions, and I’m going to explain them, so that you avoid them.
So let’s talk about how to buy a house at an auction.
There are over 5,000 tax defaulted auctions across America, every single year, and there are 3,000 counties volunteering to do those auctions all the time. So it’s constant. It doesn’t go away.
There will be certain seasons, where there will be a lot of them, but there’s plenty of business for everyone.
HOW TO BUY A HOUSE AT AN AUCTION – WHAT CAN YOU BUY?
What are they auctioning? Single family homes, small apartment properties, residential lots, small office buildings, farms, even tall buildings downtown.
Every conceivable property, except for the churches and the schools, owes property tax. So these properties are being auctioned because they defaulted on their property tax.
I’m not talking about an income tax or an excise tax. I’m talking about a property tax.
So who collects the property tax? Well, the treasurer has gotten together with the legislature, and the treasurer is authorized to not only issue levies, but also wants to collect the tax.
If they can’t collect the tax, they’re authorized to confiscate the property, put it on a list and sell it. Also, they sell those properties without a mortgage.
HOW TO BUY A HOUSE AT AN AUCTION AT A DEEP DISCOUNT
When they sell those properties without a mortgage, which is a big deal, they’re also selling those properties at discounts of 60%, 70%, and 80% from the market price or the tax assessed value.
These properties are all being sold at absolutely rock bottom dollar, and they don’t have any mortgage.
The county is authorized to do this, and they do it every single year in every county across the United States. The individual States are the ones that choose.
HOW TO BUY A HOUSE AT AN AUCTION IN A TAX LIEN STATE
Half of the states are tax lien states. Those states choose to sell a tax lien certificate. Those are very benevolent states.
Why do I say they’re benevolent? Because if they sell a tax lien certificate, they don’t kick the people out of the house, and that’s a pretty good deal. They let them stay there.
They stay in possession of the property. So if you buy a tax lien certificate, which is highly profitable, you don’t get possession of the property. What you do get is a right of ownership in that property, if the people don’t pay.
It simply means this. If you buy a tax lien certificate, you invest with the government, and you’re going to get a check back from the government.
When you buy the certificate, they give you a guarantee of what kind of interest rate you are going to get. It could be 16%, 18%, 24%, up to 36% interest.
However, if you don’t get paid, you’re going to get that property. You’re going to possess that property.
HOW TO BUY A HOUSE AT AN AUCTION – FINDING AN AUCTION
Over 2,000 people a month ask the same question, how to buy a house at an auction.
First of all, you need to know where the auction is. It’s going to be at the county. It might be at the courthouse.
It might be in the county building, but they’re going to announce it on the website for the county, or they’re going to announce it in the newspaper, or both. More than likely it will be both.
They’re going to do at least one auction a year, but some states will do one auction a month.
Anybody can go to the auction. Some properties will sell as low as $500. Other properties will sell for $50,000 and $500,000. So there’s going to be a wide range of properties that are going to sell at the auction.
You can purchase any property at that auction. All you have to do to qualify at the auction is have the money to purchase.
That doesn’t mean you walk in with a briefcase of $100 bills because they’re not going to take that. What they are going to take is some kind of instrument from a bank or something like that.
HOW TO BUY A HOUSE AT AN AUCTION WITHOUT A MORTGAGE
These properties are all sold without a mortgage. I want to say that again, these properties are sold at auction with no mortgage. The mortgage has been deleted. It’s been wiped off the property.
What does that mean? It means the property records will show that there’s no mortgage, and many of the liens will be wiped off the property.
So you’re now buying a property for a 70%, 80%, and in some cases, 90% discount AND it has no mortgage. There is no better deal than that!
If you wanted to buy a property at a low price, you’re certainly getting it there.
Property taxes are generally 1% or 2%. So when the county confiscates the property, if it was behind 2%, or 3% or 5%, that’s what they’re going to try to put it back in the market for.
They’re going to sell it for a low price, and it’s going to have no mortgage.
HOW TO BUY A HOUSE AT AN AUCTION – THE STARTING BID
Let’s review how to buy a house at an auction. The auction price is the starting bid. It’s going to be the back taxes or some small fees above that. So that’s rock bottom dollar.
What kind of discount will you get? 60%, 70%, 80% discount. That’s the place to buy an auction property.
If it didn’t surprise you before, I want to make sure that it’s burned in your brain.
The county will extinguish, delete, wipe out the mortgage, and they’ll wipe out other liens on the property. That means you’re going to get a property at a bargain price.
The starting price at the auction is always going to be the back taxes.
If you’re the high bidder, you’re going to own that mortgage-free property at rock bottom dollar.
WHY DO COUNTIES SELL TAX DEFAULTED PROPERTY?
I’ve been talking about how to buy a house at an auction, but why are they doing that?
The answer is simply this. They’re returning a property that was off the tax roll, back to the tax roll. How do they do that? They sell it at auction. The new buyer registers in their name, and now that property is back on the tax roll.
What do the counties want out of all this? The counties simply want one thing. They want all the properties they can get on the tax roll. They don’t want the property.
I can assure you, the county has enough property within the county that they’re maintaining. They don’t want your property, and these properties will not be maintained.
They’ll just be left until someone buys them, so buy them at rock bottom dollar with no mortgage.
The county has a lot of bills to pay. What are those bills? Well, they have to pay the police and the fire department. They have to pay for the schools and the school teachers. You’re getting the idea.
So the county just wants the revenue from the tax sale.
HOW TO BUY A HOUSE AT AN AUCTION FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD
Anyone can buy at the auction. You just need cash. There’s no other qualification.
Can you do this from anywhere in the world?
If you have an internet connection, and you can work in dollars, then you’ll want to learn about online auctions.
If you don’t know how to do that, we have plenty of classes to teach you how to do it.
Right now you’ll also want to take advantage of a course I’m offering you for free.
My Safe Haven Investors Course, which normally sells for $197, will show you in more detail how to buy a house at an auction, and it’s my free gift to you. Be sure to get your FREE course today. I know you’ll learn a lot from it.
HOW TO BUY A HOUSE AT AN AUCTION – NEW YORK
Let me show you some examples of properties that are available at these tax defaulted auctions. This will give you a sense of how big this business is.
I’m going to start out with a couple of counties over in New York. Then I’m going to look at some in California, and then I’ll show you some things here in Florida.
I have an auction brochure in my hand, and it has a lot of property in it. I got this online from Sullivan County, which is just about an hour out of New York City.
They have 355 properties available. I can open up this brochure to any page I want, and I will find a list of properties.
There are at least 10 on every single page, and there are multiple pages in this auction brochure.
Let’s take a closer look. I marked one here. I just picked this up because it was a ranch house.
There is a picture of it, and it tells me the address. It gives me the tax number, and it tells me the market value. So the market value for this property is $151,000.
Now, what if I could buy that property for a 70% or 80% discount? What if I could get it for 10 or 20 cents on the dollar? What a bargain that would be. Then I can do anything I want with it, and it has no mortgage.
That’s just one example. Every county can make a brochure like this. If they don’t make a brochure, they’ll make one with just a whole list.
HOW TO BUY A HOUSE AT AN AUCTION – LOS ANGELES
Now, let me show you Los Angeles. I’ve got a book here from one of the L.A. auctions. I have the auction list, and I can go to any property in here.
This has six properties on every page, and this isn’t a brochure; it’s a book.
There’s enough for everybody at these auctions, and there are going to be 1,000 of them.
Los Angeles sometimes will do two sales a year. Sometimes it’s online at the same time that it’s offline.
HOW TO BUY A HOUSE AT AN AUCTION – TAMPA, FL
Now, here I have a brochure from one of the Florida counties. It says Tampa.
It’s the Tampa Bay Times. This is Hillsborough County, and there are no pictures in here. It’s just a list.
This is a regular newspaper, and it’s got 40,000 tax lien certificates in there!
My point is, there’s enough for everyone. You just have to learn how to do this.
Once you learn the step-by-step process, which we can teach you, then you can be doing this every year in every county in the United States, because it just never stops.
This has been going on for 200 years. I didn’t invent it. I just learned how to teach it, and my students make $25,000, $50,000, $100,000 in their first year, if they want to. We can show you how to do the same thing.
Get a head start now by getting the FREE Safe Haven course.
HOW TO BUY A HOUSE AT AN AUCTION WITHOUT MAKING COSTLY MISTAKES
I promised you I’d tell you about two mistakes. I see these two mistakes happen all the time at auction with newcomers, and I also see it happening with experienced investors.
Let me tell you what I see going on, and I hope you will be able to avoid these mistakes.
Mistake number one. People show up at the auction, and they’re excited. They want to make money, so they start bidding. Well, if you haven’t looked at the property, you should not start bidding.
How do you know what’s actually there? Is that property next to a chicken farm that might have a lot of odors, or has that property burned down? Could there have been a hurricane this past week?
Who knows if you’re just buying a number on a sheet of paper. So you need to look at the property. Boots on the ground, eyes on the property are very important.
You don’t necessarily have to be there yourself, but you’d darn sure better have somebody check that property before you buy. That’s mistake number one.
Mistake number two is similar. I see this happening on a regular basis. People show up at the auction; they’re all excited, but someone beats them out of a property because they bid higher.
That’s nothing to worry about. There are always plenty of auction properties. However, you don’t want to just start bidding without having an exit strategy.
What’s an exit strategy? You have to know what you’re going to sell it for. You don’t want to start bidding, just so that you’re the winning bidder. That isn’t important.
The winning bidder can bid too much money, and that’s what they do. You can’t sell it if you’re into the property at too high a price.
There are two things you need to really be thinking about. One, look at the property. Two, you have to have an exit strategy.
TAKEAWAY
We hope you enjoyed what Ted had to say today about how to buy a house at an auction, specifically a tax defaulted property auction.
Think about how low property taxes are and the amazing discounts you can get since the starting bids at these auctions are at or very near the amount of the unpaid property taxes.
Then on top of that the county wipes the mortgage off of the property. So you can buy good homes in nice neighborhoods mortgage-free for 10, 20, 30 cents on the dollar, if you know the rules and do your homework.
Ted can teach you how.
A student asked us the other day, “What makes Ted Thomas different?” Well, this was easy to answer. Ted Thomas has been teaching students for over 30 years how to invest in tax defaulted property.
Ted doesn’t just give you a home study course and send you on your way. With Ted, you have a complete support system to ensure you have the best chance at success.
Ted Thomas has a team of coaches and guidance facilitators to help students every day, Monday through Friday.
That includes live webinar classes each day to help students with research and a weekly Zoom webinar for students to ask Ted Thomas coaches tax lien and tax deed questions and get expert answers.
This is why Ted Thomas is different! Nobody else offers this kind of support. Also, Ted wants to make it easy for you get started, so he’s offering you a FREE course called the Safe Haven Investor System.
This course is 2 hours of streaming videos and a 100-page illustrated manual that teaches you all about tax lien certificates and tax defaulted property, so you will know how to buy a house at an auction inexpensively.
Safe Haven normally sells for $197, but you can get the course absolutely FREE. It’s Ted’s gift to you, so act now and get your FREE Safe Haven course today.
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