Mortgages

19 Aug Mortgages

Focus on tax delinquent properties, rural lands without houses and properties and especially without mortgages. These properties are cheap simply because they have lesser investment costs.

To check, go online to the county’s website to do a title search if a property has mortgage. Visit the county office if you are not online. Either way you can the appropriate filed documents through the recorder/clerks office. The Recorder or clerk records and indexes every single document in the county, including ownership transfer, mortgage, leans or anything about properties. You can also check them online because some counties post clerk records in their webpage.

You also want to keep in mind the real market value of the property to further assess the marketability of a property. Assessors can specifically give you the current or previous values or sometimes the assessed market value of a property. Sometimes you can calculate the market value of a property by knowing the ratio the county using for their assessments, for instance in Arizona the assessed value is usually 2/3 of the real market value. Say, a property that is assessed at $4000 would mean a ballpark market value of $10,000. So, do not drop the property from the list. Figure however the consistent ratio of assessments by checking ratios in others states. Some states assess at 10% of the market value.

While treasurers give you tax-related information of the property and assessors give details of the properties, clerks also give such information. So, look on files of Mr. A, B, C, etc and what properties each one owns and their respective profiles. Check for mortgages to make sure no investment liability comes up. Also do title search of previous owners or chain of titles and know how this property was sold. Check Mr. A, B, C, etc and how did they transfer the property. Look at other documents. Check for mistakes to grasp the overall picture of the ownership of any property.