Tax Sale How-To

Part 1

Buying land, or at least enough space to feel like you can garden and get more self sufficient, is getting harder to do. Our avenue to owning about 6 acres came in the form of a county tax lien sale. This multi part blog will help you learn how to find land that interests you, determine who owns it, and the process of potentially buying it for the back taxes. It’s important to know, I’m not a lawyer, or a real estate professional. This information is based on my personal experience of buying 10+ properties on the courthouse steps over the years in Missouri. The laws and opportunities in you area may be different, and we’ll show you how to find out what they are.

Finding Space

Finding that perfect spot is hard to do. There will be concessions you will probably have to make in order to find land in this way. It’s likely not exactly where you want. It may be smaller than you would really like. The very first thing to do is though is make a list of things about the area you are currently in, and then a list of things you’d be willing to accept. Location, size, access to public services. There are many things to consider, and there’s a fine line in all of those things that make a property more, or less, attractive to other bidders that may be interested. Whether this is a property you intend to live on or use as a retreat, you should look at all of the towns in your area that are more rural, with less than a few thousand people preferably, as your starting point. There may be options in larger towns and cities, but the competition for any decent land will be higher from developers and other interested parties.

So you have a list, that’s a good start. I like to start by simply using google maps to see what the area looks like in very small, rural areas. What you should look for are areas on the edge of those towns that look overgrown. An entire block that looks grown up and neglected on the satellite view. Take a look at the street view if there is one to see if you can tell if there is a house or other buildings on the property. Work to get a feel for what is on the property and in the area to see what you think. Then, road trip time to investigate in person. It’s important that you do not trespass on the property. Even old, overgrown property is owned by someone and there’s no good reason to potentially start off on the wrong foot. Take pictures from the street so you can look at them multiple times as reference to what’s there. Relying on memory will not do when you are considering what it may take to clean a place up.

Do this for every property that has potential of filling your needs. Make it a few trips over a few weekends if need be, but compile all the properties and the pictures in a way that you can keep track of what you learn about each place. Now that your maybe list is complete it’s time to start figuring out who owns what. Step one is hitting a GIS website that will tell you the last person to pay taxes on the property, the size and some other information that may or may not be useful. I like to use regrid.com to start my search. Click on the “go to map” section and enter the town and county you are looking at. It is free, with some pop up ads wanting you to sign up, but refreshing the page clears those out long enough to make it worth your time. Find each property that you like, and make a list of names, along with the mailing address of the last tax payer. The further away that person lives from the property, the better! Don’t worry if you see a larger space that is broken up by different owners of the lots, they may all be up for grabs!

Now that your information list is growing, it’s time to find out what the status of each property is. Best place to start, of course, is the internet. Search for your county tax collector website and save it to your favorites, you’ll be coming back. Look to see if they have tax sale information posted for the county. Ours posts a list about July 1st, with the tax sale occurring in August as required by Missouri Law. If you are outside that time frame for your area, a trip to the collector is in order. Go and introduce yourself and ask if they have a tax sale information packet. They may not if it’s not close to a sale, but should be able to tell you where to look online for your state laws regarding them. If the list is posted, compare to what you have compiled and see if any of the names or property addresses are listed. Hopefully so! If not, it is still worth going to visit and see what the collector knows about the place. Things like, do the owners pay promptly each year themselves or through a trust? Do they know if the assessor has changed the valuation on the property lately due to it’s condition. Make friends with the collector, they are a wealth of information, as is the assessor of the county!

Hopefully you’ve gained some useful property information and a promising lead or two about what their status is. We’ll talk in part 2 how to do some legal legwork to determine if there are hindrances to buying it, and what you need to do to protect yourself early in the process. Thanks for reading along and I will post the next part soon!