How To Get Tax Sale Lists for Free

Once you know when the tax sale is coming up in your area, you need to get the list of properties that are in the sale. I use naco.org to find tax sale property lists online for tax lien and tax deed sales. This only works for counties that have this information online. For counties or states that do not have this information online, you can either call the tax collector and ask how to get the tax sale list or you can buy the tax sale list from a tax sale list provider. To find out which counties have tax sale information and tax sale lists online, you can consult my State Guide.

To go to the county's web site, first go to naco.org and click on the link to find a county. This will bring you to a page with a map of the United States. Click on the state that you are interested in and you'll be taken to that state's web page with a list of all of the counties in the state. Find the county that you are interested in and click on that link. You will be taken to the NACO page for that county. Click on the link to the county on the top of the page and you will go to the county's web site. Note that this will only work if the county has a web site.

County Property Tax

Once you're on the county's web site, look for a link to the department or county office that is responsible for conducting the tax sale. For most states, this will be the county treasurer or county tax collector. If you're not sure who is responsible for the tax sale in your state, then consult my State Guide. Once you get to the web site of the person or department that conducts the tax sale, look for a link to a list of tax sale properties. For larger counties, you can usually find this online. The exception to this is the counties in the Northeastern states. A lot of the Northeastern states do not have county tax sales. Instead the tax sales are conducted by the municipality, so instead of looking for the county web site, in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, look for the municipal tax collectors web site - not county web site. New York has both county and municipal sales in some counties.

If you can't find the tax sale list that you want online, you can always buy a list from a tax sale list provider. Even if you can find the tax sale list online for free, you still may want to purchase the list from a tax sale list provider. That's because the list that you get from the tax collector does not always have the information that you need. Frequently it will only have a parcel ID number, owner name, and amount due. What you want to know is what is the address of the property, what is the assessment and value of the property, what type or class property is it, and how big is the property. All of this (and sometimes even more information) is included in the detailed list that you can get from tax sale list providers. I talked about some different tax sale list providers in the last podcast episode, "How to Find Out About Tax Sales." You can listen to that episode to get the names and urls of tax list providers for different areas of the country. Purchasing a detailed tax sale list from one of these companies will save you a lot of work in doing your due diligence.

How To Get Tax Sale Lists for Free

Investing in Alabama Tax Liens and Tax Deeds

In all 67 Alabama counties, property taxes are due October 1 and become delinquent on January 1 the following year. Once property taxes become delinquent for a property, a tax lien is placed on the property until the taxes are paid in full by the property owner. All Alabama tax lien sales take place in late April or early May. In Jefferson County alone, Alabama's largest county, over 4000 tax lien certificates worth over million are sold. In the State of Alabama, the guaranteed interest earned on a tax lien certificate is 12 percent per annum, starting the day of the tax lien sale.

Generally, the tax lien sales are held on the county courthouse steps and the premium bidding method is used. In a premium bidding method, each property is started at the minimum bid, which is usually the sum of property taxes, the accumulated interest on those taxes, and any sale administrative fees, such as advertising the tax lien on the property in the local newspaper. Starting at the minimum bid, investors take turns bidding up the tax lien certificates until there is only one investor remaining who is willing to pay the highest "premium" on the tax lien certificate. Most Alabama county tax auctions start on a Monday and they will continue on consecutive days until all land parcels have been publicly offered.

County Property Tax

The purchaser of a tax lien certificate has the right, but not the obligation, to pay subsequent property taxes on the property each October 1. If the investor allows the subsequent taxes on the property to become delinquent, the tax lien certificate (in the amount of that year's taxes) will be offered again in the April or May sale. If the purchaser holds on to the tax lien certificate, pays all subsequent property taxes for a full three years following the initial tax sale, and the property owner (or other interested party) does not redeem the property (pay all accumulated taxes), the tax lien certificate holder has a right to the tax deed on the property.

All tax lien certificates that did not receive any bids at a county tax sale are assigned to the State of Alabama. These tax lien certificates are often referred to as Over-the-Counter (OTC) or Assignment Purchasing liens. The same "redemption period" is used for these tax lien certificates, which means any tax lien certificates that have been in State inventory for over three years will be offered as tax deeds. Both tax liens and tax deeds in Alabama's state inventory are available for purchase by any private investor. For an OTC tax lien/tax deed list from every Alabama county, go to the Alabama Department of Revenue Property Tax page.

An investor must submit an application to the State for each property for which they have an interest. An investor may submit as many as 20 applications. Instructions and application forms are on the page referenced above. The lists are updated at least once a week. Like any investment, it is important that any investor does their research and due diligence on each property. If a land parcel stays in the State's inventory for more than five years, it is a possibility that an investor can obtain the tax deed to this property for less than the amount of taxes due.

Unlike some other lien states in the United States, tax lien certificates convert into tax deeds after the three-year redemption period without the tax lien certificate holder having to start the foreclosure process on the property. Instead, this tax deed received pursuant to the Alabama process is the result of an administrative foreclosure and does not guarantee a marketable title. So, a quiet title action may be required to gain an insurable title.

To give you an idea of some counties you may want to invest in, I will give you the five most populated Alabama counties below: Jefferson County - 656,700 Mobile County - 404,157 Madison - 304,307 Montgomery - 223, 571 Shelby - 178,182

There is definitely a lot of opportunity when it comes to tax lien and tax deed investing in Alabama.

Investing in Alabama Tax Liens and Tax Deeds