How to Buy Bank Foreclosed Or Tax Delinquent Homes For Sale

Buying foreclosed or tax delinquent homes is really quite simple. If you’re dealing with a bank foreclosed home, you can buy that property directly from the bank (usually via a real estate company). If you are interested in a government foreclosed tax delinquent property, in most cases you will bid at auction for the deed to the property, or a lien on the property.

In both cases, by the time the property is available for you to purchase, it should have a clean title. In the case of bank foreclosure, during the court process to settle the foreclosure, other lien holders would have to come forward in order to get anything out of the property. Any judgments left over would follow the previous owner, not the property. So if you’re buying a bank-owned property through a real estate agent, you don’t have to worry about anyone else having an interest in the property.

The same goes for a tax foreclosure. Tax deed sale wipes clean any mortgages, liens, or other interests in the property. If you are the winning bidder on a property, and you get a deed in your name to the property, then you are the free and clear owner and you don’t have to worry about any judgments or liens crawling out of the woodwork.

Unfortunately, getting a good deal on tax foreclosed property bought at tax sale is a challenge. Since there are hordes of other bidders, many of which will be big tax sale companies that invest in tax sale property full-time, the chances of getting a winning bid, much less a winning bid for a great deal, are slim to none. However, this doesn’t mean you can invest in tax sale property– you just have to go about getting it in a different way.

The best way to get tax property is to wait until just before the property is about to be lost permanently, and contact the owners directly to set up a purchase deal. In some state this would be the end of the “redemption” period, the year or so after the tax sale when the owner can still bail out their property. Other states have already foreclosed by the time the tax sale rolls around, and the winning bidder at tax sale takes possession of the property right then and there.

At this point, the owner will be highly motivated to sell to you. Since they have often resigned themselves to losing the property without getting anything from it at all, these owners are often happy to sell to you, and for very little, just to avoid losing the property to the government. While there are rarely mortgages on these properties, if there are other liens on the property, you’ll need to take care of those in addition to paying off the delinquent taxes– but this can often be a great bargaining chip with the owner to get a fantastic deal.

Delve into the world of deed grabbing as this method of tax property investing is known, and learn to easily profit with little to no competition.

Check out this free delinquent tax investing course, “5 Days to Getting Tax Delinquent Property for $200 or Less.”

M. Dawson is a Chicago area writer, real estate investor, and entrepreneur.