Doing Research in the County

02 Apr Doing Research in the County

When you set out to invest in Tax Delinquent property you will have to do a little research on the properties you are investing in before buying them. That is only common sense.

However, whether it be through a Tax Lien, Tax Deed and even through my Direct Investment method, where you buy Tax Delinquent properties directly from the owners circumventing the auctions and for pennies on the dollar, you don’t know in advance which of the properties you are actually going to be able to buy.

And therefore you want to as little time and money in advance on doing research on properties you might not own. Just enough to make sure you know what you get into and you can make sure the properties you are looking after are quality properties and not some strip of land 5 feet wide but 5,000 feet long.

So here is what you do.

1. Go to the county and find the Tax Collector / Treasurer. From him, get a list of the properties coming up for Tax auction or the list of the properties left over from the last Tax Lien Sale.
2. At the Tax Collector identify a list of properties you are interested in based on their APN (assessor Parcel number which if you know how to read it tells you where approx. the property is located in the county)
3. Write down all APNs for the properties you are looking for and then go over to the Assessor’s office.
4. At the Assessor’s office, look at each map for each property to make sure their shape and form is fine with you. Again sometimes 1 Acre can be a property that is perfectly square and sometimes it is a property that is 10 feet wide and 4356 feet long. That adds up to 43560 Square feet which equals 1 acre. Obviously you would not want such a property.
5. Once you now reduced the list of properties you are interested in, go to the Recorder’s office (also called sometimes the Clerk’s office) and do a Quick Grantor Grantee search (also called a preliminary title search) to check if there are any alarming documents recorded against hat property.
6. Now you have your final list of properties and you spent perhaps at the most ½ day doing this. Now take your final list get a map of the county/city and pinpoint each property there.
7. Then go and create a route plan and inspect the properties