July 21st, 2009
Nine years ago my husband and I sold our 2 bedroom condo thinking that we were going to rent for a while until we were able to find a three bedroom home for our growing family (we had three young boys). We were unable to find a place to rent or buy in the county that we lived in. We moved almost an hour away to a small 2 bedroom apartment in the town that I grew up in. The housing market was just starting to take off and for the next 4 years we looked for a home that we could afford in three different counties in NJ and were unsuccessful.
Because we couldn’t find a house to buy that we wanted to live in, we decided that we would look into purchasing real estate for an investment. The problem was that rents had not rose at the same rate as selling prices of houses, so if you had to purchase an investment property and get financing, the rent that you collected would not be able to cover the mortgage payments. Still I thought that real estate investing was the fastest way to build wealth. So I thought that we should try buying foreclosed houses or pre-foreclosures.
The real estate market was booming at this time and investors were paying close to market price for foreclosures because the market was rising so fast. At the foreclosure sales that I went to, small distressed houses sold for over $300,000, and that was out of my price range. Also at these sales you needed to have 20% of the bid price in certified funds on the day of the sale and the rest within 10 days. Since we found ourselves locked out of the real estate market, I wanted to do something with the little bit of money that we had left from the sale of our condominium to invest for our future. I had heard about tax lien investing, and I thought that was something that I might be able to do.
I started going to tax sales in NJ, the state that I lived in at the time. The problem was that I could not find any information about how to invest in tax liens in my state. At that time there was just one book in print about tax lien investing and it didn’t contain any specific information about my state. What information that I could find was very general. So I started going to tax sales and doing some research to find out more. I met someone else that was trying to do the same thing I was, only on a much larger scale, so we teamed up and helped each other.
We learned the tax lien investing business in NJ, and for a while I worked for my partner, building a sizable tax lien portfolio for him while I was building a smaller portfolio for myself. I hired a handful of people to help me and trained them on how to do due diligence for tax sale properties and bid at the sale. We even developed our own software to track our investments and automate a lot of the work.
Meanwhile I realized that there were a lot of people out there like me who wanted to learn about tax lien investing, but didn’t know where to turn. I started my web site, TaxLienLady.com, to answer questions about how to get started investing in tax liens. I researched tax lien and tax deed investing in every state and wrote a couple of e-books, which I sold through my web site. Then I started doing teleseminars, and interviewing experts in different states on aspects of tax lien and tax deed investing. I wrote step-by-step home study courses on tax lien and tax deed investing, and began doing live seminars for local investing groups.
Now I have multiple home study courses, web sites, and blogs for tax lien and tax deed investing. I have a tax lien investing podcast on iTunes, Videos on YouTube, and articles on tax lien and tax deed investing that appear all over the internet. My goal through all these mediums is to give you the truth about tax lien investing, without the hype, and to help you build your own profitable portfolio of tax liens or tax deeds. If you’d like to find out more about how you can get started investing in real estate secured tax lien certificates, or buying properties for pennies on the dollar with tax deeds, you can get my free report “7 Steps to Building Your Profitable Tax Lien Portfolio” at www.TaxLienInvestingBasics.com.
By admin • Posted in
Investing •
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May 22nd, 2009
Real estate listings are an easy and very accessible way of finding out what is available on the market. Such listings include the square footage of a home, how many bedrooms, the number of bathrooms, and often the asking price. Real estate listings can be obtained at a local real estate office or in the local newspaper. Today, the internet makes obtaining listings for property that is not in your immediate area just as accessible to individuals.
On the flip side, real estate listings are a great marketing tool for anyone trying to sell a home. Generally, the more information the seller provides in the listing, the more likely potential buyers will further inquire about the home.
Real estate classifieds are ads by home owners or real estate agents that list various homes on the market. These classifieds consist of new homes, basic homes for sale, and foreclosures.
If you are interested in a particular real estate listing, it is important that you take some time to research the owner and/or realtor before committing to purchasing anything. This is especially true if you are considering the purchase of a home that is in another state. Real estate laws vary greatly from one state to another.
Investigating individual realtors and their agencies is a fairly easy task, though it may be a bit time consuming. You can ask for information on homes that have recently sold. You can then talk with a few buyers and sellers. If you live in a small area, word of mouth will help you find all you need to know about a particular real estate provider. You can also check with the better business bureau to see if any claims have been filed.
Investigating a private seller is much more difficult. It is suggested that you read all documents very carefully. It is further recommended that you get all agreements in writing, no matter how small the detail may seem.
Real estate listings offer a variety of homes for sale as well as a marketing tool for sellers. Buying and selling real estate can be an exciting process, but it is an endeavor that requires common sense and paying attention to details.