What online tax lien sales are coming up this spring?
And which of these sales are worth bidding on?
Thanks to the pandemic in 2020, more tax lien sales have gone online in the last couple of years. Some counties have gone back to having live tax sales, but many are still conducting their tax sales online. And states that only had a couple of counties with online tax sales before 2020, now have more counties with tax sale auctions online…
Here’s the scoop on tax lien sales that are happening online in the next couple of months…
Finishing up this month are the Indiana tax certificate sales. These are among my favorite tax sales and you can read more about them HERE. I did a Done With You training course on these tax sales, but there are still a handful of these sales taking place this month that it’s not too late to register for. And there is one that isn’t taking place until early in June. You can still get access to this 4 module training at https://taxlienlady.com/Indiana.
Nassau County New York, has a big online tax lien auction in February each year. But this year due to the pandemic the sale was postponed until May. The auction is on RealAuction.com and registration is open until April 23. Bidding ends on May 5. I am not a fan of this tax sales for multiple reasons. This sale was very competitive before it went online and now that it’s online it’s even more competitive. Also there is a hefty deposit necessary to bid ($5000 minimum), which is 10% of your budget. That means you have to have a minimum budget for this sale of $50,000. And there is a non-refundable registration fee of $175. This sale is not for beginners!
The state that is probably best known for it’s online tax lien auctions, and one of the first states to have online tax sales is Florida. Those tax sales happen in May of each year. While most of these auctions were already online. (There were only about 10 counties left that didn’t have online tax lien sales). Now they are all online. Competition in this state is very competitive and good liens typically get bid down to 0.25% interest. While I like this state better than Arizona (who’s online tax sales are over already for this year), it’s not one of my favorite tax lien investing states.
Two other states on the eastern seaboard also have tax sales this time of year, and have increased the number of these tax sales that are online. Those states are Maryland and New Jersey. New Jersey is the state that I started investing in. And while I do like that state for investing, it is one of the more complicated states for bidding, and also very competitive. Like Nassau County, NY, these tax sales were competitive when they were live and are even more competitive now that they’re online. Also the live tax sales do not require advance registration and deposits, but the online tax sales do.
Maryland is also a complicated state to bid in. But what I like about Maryland is that the interest rate is not bid down. Instead premium is bid – which means the price of the lien is bid up. The other things that I like about Maryland are the short redemption period – only 4 months. Each county in MD has different rules and different interest rates, so you must pay attention to the rules of the sale for each county! Because Maryland tax sales are someone complicated, but I also think it’s one of the better states to invest in, I’ll be teaching another Done With You training for the Maryland tax sales in May.
Other states with online tax sales coming up are Louisiana and Alabama. I am not a fan of the tax lien auctions in either of these states for different reasons. In Louisiana I’m not crazy about the bidding procedure, they bid down the percent ownership of the property should the lien not redeem and the tax lien investor foreclose on the property. Owning anything less than 100% is not enough leverage in my estimated to get paid on your lien. What I don’t like about investing in Alabama is 2 things, how long it takes for properties to get into the tax sale and the long (3 year) redemption period. I prefer to invest in states with shorter redemption periods – the shorter the better!
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