Session 4 How to Get a List

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1 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 1 Session 4 How to Get a List The List is the most IMPORTANT AND CRUCIAL piece of information in this process. If you don t have a list you can t send out letters and if you can t send out letters then you don t get calls back and you can t buy properties. In the end, this means that you can t sell any properties. By obtaining the list, what you are doing is looking for the PRIME CANDIDATES for this investment method. We are going to define Prime Candidates as people who: Don t want their property anymore; or Inherited the property; or Live far away from the property; or Don t pay property taxes anymore; or Are likely to stop paying the property taxes soon; and are typically individuals or families or family trusts or churches (and NOT typically companies). These are going to be our target groups. Some of these properties are tax delinquent or their owners are about to stop paying their property taxes and they will be delinquent very soon.

2 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 2 But the majority usually does not have Back Taxes and is just owed free and clear by the original owner of often many years There are many reasons for people stop paying their taxes. In many cases there is a small title issue and owners don t want to deal with it. In some other cases, heirs just don t want the property. There is no attachment or interest for the property at all. Just to elaborate a little bit more on this, I can tell you that just a little over 1/3 of all the properties I have purchased had back taxes on them. The other 2/3 did not have any back taxes due. In other words, these people are still paying their taxes, but they just don t want the land anymore. At this point they still have the mindset of not wanting to let the property go for taxes - BECAUSE they paid so much money for this property and - BECAUSE they still are paying taxes They still have the hope that magically someone will show up and buy the property from them (even though they don t even have it listed) so they decided to pay just one more year of property taxes. Plus, some of these people feel like if they let the property go for back taxes they have failed. But if we find these people and offer them an honorable way out of this uncomfortable situation by selling their property, then they might just take us up on that offer. If we buy the property from them, then they are not losing it but they can honestly say that they sold the property. At the end of the day, they won t feel like they failed, and on top of that they got some money out of the deal.

3 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 3 How to get a list. O.k., so let s talk about the most important part of this process, which is getting the list itself. The good news is that there are several ways we can get different lists or even different ways to get the same list from different sources. Sometimes getting the list could be very easy and sometimes it could be a little bit demanding, depending on the particular county you are working with. Getting the List from a List broker (online) This is the fastest and easiest way and you can get started right away. It does cost a little bit of money but you can start out slow and get a few records for just a few bucks. You can get in contact with these companies and request a list for the particular county you are working on

4 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 4 There are many more out there, just put in the county name and property list into Google (e.g., search Costilla county property list ). Demonstration Type California property lists into Google search bar. There are different places such as You just need to search through the results and find the one that has lists for the county you are working on. Most of these places charge a few cents per record so you may just want to order around $500 worth of records so you can test them. I am really not endorsing any of them but they all should be fairly good. Pick a few of them and compare their offerings and prices against each other and you should soon find out which one is the BEST for your particular area and needs. Getting the List from Title companies This is also a good way to obtain your list but you will have to pay some money to get it. Some people do it this way because their time is very important and valuable, and they know that at the end of the day this is not an expense but an investment. Title Companies get the data from the county IT department each day/week with everything that has changed.

5 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 5 They actually have a copy of the county database. If you have an established relationship with your title company you can ask them for the list. Check rules in your state. If permitted, offer to give deals to them in exchange for list of properties. Ask the title company if it is legal because there are some states that prohibit this type of exchange. You just need to ask them for a list of properties with certain criteria and tell them you will close some of your deals through them as payment. Make friends with a good title company (this will help you later on and they can become part of your Power Team ) even if they don t give you the list or can exchange with you. You want to be able to have a contact person so every future deal you do through that title company you can just call them and they know exactly what you want and you will not have to explain yourself over and over again. Getting the List from the County This is the road most of my students take, perhaps because it is the less expensive one but it can also be one of the most work intensive depending how open the county is you are dealing with. Sometimes you will come across a county where people are very friendly and helpful, but some other times they could be a little bit more challenging to deal with.

6 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 6 What I mean by this is that county workers don t have the same mindset as you and I have (that s why they are working 8-5 for the county and you and I are running a Land Investment Business), they don t see the potential of what you are asking for, and quite often they don t understand why you are asking for that particular piece of information or list. So, in those cases you have to be patient and do the best you can to get your message across, in order to obtain what you want. The list you are looking for it is not a very common piece of information, and sometimes the first person you talk to will not be very familiar with it, so be ready to talk to several people before you get in touch with the right person. The Rule of 5: There is something I call the rule of 5, which means that for some lists (particularly the delinquent list) you will have to speak to about five people in the county before you can reach the right person who can help you. So, don t get discouraged if you don t get the list on your first attempt at speaking with the county people. I think that, in general, county workers are helpful and friendly and eventually you will get what you want. Actually, if you think about it, by getting the list and buying these delinquent properties, you are helping the county to get taxes paid and helping the economy to move forward. Counties don t want delinquent properties sitting there generating back taxes. Instead, they want taxes to be paid, in order to pay for schools, roads, community services, police departments, hospitals, etc, etc, etc. In other words, your business activity will be very beneficial for everybody; sellers, buyers, the county, and of course for you and at the end this is a win-win situation.

7 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 7 Here are the different lists you can get from the county: Assessor s Roll Definition: The Assessor s Roll, is a comprehensive List of ALL properties in county with their value, size, usage and ownership information You can get the Assessor s Roll at the Assessor s office (this might also be called Appraiser s office). There could be another name for the office, so you need to find the office that keeps track of the assessed value. When you send something in for recording, it goes to the recorder, and then to the treasurer so they can change the information. Then the assessor determines the value of it. This will need to be your first stop if you go into the county offices. The Assessor s Roll is AKA: Assessment Roll You can get it from List Brokers. You also can get it through Title Companies. (Please check in your state if this is still allowed, for example this is not allowed anymore in CA, except for very specific circumstances). List contains ALL parcels (Land, Homes, Commercial, Multi-family ) No tax information is included on that list, but that s o.k. When you have the assessors list what you have to do is take the assessment information. You have pretty much everything you need about each property; o how much it is worth, o who owns it, o What type of land it is, etc, etc.

8 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 8 All that information is on the list. It does not, however, have any back tax information since that is just not part of the Assessor s information. The Assessor s Roll can be a very large list (enough to fit one or more data CDs) and when you ask for the list they will probably send you a huge list in either excel or in an access database or some other format. If you don t know what to do with the file type you definitely want to talk to the Information Technology (IT) department because they can usually either give you list in a format that you can work with (Microsoft Excel) or in many cases they can already focus on the properties only that fit your exact criteria. Assessor list fields When going for the Assessor s list make sure it contains as many of the following fields as possible: Assessor Parcel Number (APN) (the Parcel or Account number). Owner name (The First Name and Last Name of the owners). Owner mailing address (the Mailing address of the Property Owners (not to confuse with the property address which mostly will not be available because land rarely has a postal address before it is being built on). Parcel size (You are looking at all sizes. Don t discard any). Assessed value (This should be the equivalent of a Market Value of $3,000- $5,000 on the low side and $50,000 to $80,000 on the high side).

9 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 9 Improvement value (should be under $10,000). I usually go for a maximum of $10,000 in improvement value because this amount usually includes a well, septic system, fence or money they spent to get electricity but it excludes all or most houses and mobile homes. Use Code (what s it used for). The use code tells you what the property is used for. It is like the zoning but much more detailed. If the property in fact is currently a vacant piece of land the use code will be Land or Vacant Residential land or Vacant Commercial. On the other hand, if the property has a single family residence on the lot then the use code will be reported as SF Residential. There are also some other classifications such as vacant agricultural, vacant residential, vacant commercial but basically the use code shows what the land is currently used for. Short legal description (not crucial but helpful.) This is a short version of the legal description. It tells you the exact location of the property. This is one field that will usually never change. You won t need this right now, but you will need it later when you get ready to make offers. So if you have a chance to ask for whichever fields you want to from the county then why not ask for it right now so you don t have to go look for it later on again. Vacant land list Subset of assessor s list (get it at Assessor s office, too) Only sometimes available (if savvy assessor or IT department) Make sure you ask for it right away because it could save you time on filtering the list. If it is the vacant list you may get 10,000 records of only vacant land, instead of 90,000 which could include houses, apartments, etc. It will save you filtering time later.

10 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 10 This list will have the same data fields as the assessment roll. Tax Lien/Tax Deed list How Tax Liens work: If someone doesn t pay their taxes the county needs to do something about it because the taxes are used to pay for schools, fire departments, etc. So, if someone is not paying their taxes, the county will eventually take the property and will schedule an auction to offer a tax lien for the amount of taxes owed. At this point the county only is attaching a lien on the property but is not selling the property itself. The winner of the auction will be the owner of the lien (since he paid the money and so to speak Advanced it to the county) and get several rights. Amongst them are the - right to get a high interest rate on the amount of the lien, - the right to foreclose on that particular property after a certain amount of time. - Plus a few more which don t need to be mentioned here. One of the biggest draw-backs of Tax Liens is the competition during the Auction. You do not want to go to the tax lien auction list because of that. If you do you would be mainly be accumulating interest on these liens and you may not even get the property in the end because in most cases the property owner redeems before you can foreclose. But even though most property owners redeem, they might do that because they sell the property to someone like you or me. So as a result this list is a GREAT list to find people willing to sell, and once you buy you go and redeem the taxes (and the poor Tax Lien Investor gets nothing but his money back plus interest).

11 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 11 How Tax deeds Work: In some counties when people don t pay their taxes the county will wait for the statutory limit to run out and eventually the county will sell the actual property in a public auction. Based on my technique, if someone hasn t paid their property taxes in a year, they will be more likely to sell the land to you. You don t want the land to go to the tax deed auction because you will be fighting the competition. You want to take the list and contact the owners directly and buy it from them. You can obtain these lists online or from the tax collector s office directly. If they (owners) stopped paying taxes, it is a clear indicator that they don t want the property anymore. For this type of list the fields you should have are: APN (Parcel number aka account number). Owner s name. Legal description. Amount owed this year (Important!!) You can use this to back into the value of the property. For example, if they owe $100 in taxes, and the taxes in that particular county is 1% of the value of property a year, then you can find out that the value of that particular parcel is $10,000

12 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 12 Number of years taxes are owed for. It gives you an idea of how behind that owner is. You are more likely to get a property with 3-4 years of unpaid taxes than a property which is defaulted just for 6 months or a year. Total amount owed. Crucial to know this piece of information because it will be very important for you to make a convenient offer. Often does not have owner s mailing address. Use virtual assistant (high school kids, stay-at home moms) to fill in the addresses fields for you. You have them search the county website to get this information for you. You can just pay them a set amount per record. If you go to the LandProfitGenerator site, under resources there is a video that will show you how to find someone to do this for you. Resources: County tax collector (aka Treasurer) o They will charge you a little more and will charge you per record. o They have the debtor s complete address. o It should tell you the type of lien and it looks like they show IRS liens as well.

13 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 13 o provides tax delinquent records. o Once you click on the state you want it will show you the amount of parcels that are delinquent. o Nationwide source for tax lien and tax deed sales. o In the top right corner it will tell you how many parcels nationwide are delinquent. Several regional list providers when searching Google for keyword tax lien list or tax deed list. Sometimes you will find the individual county lists. If they only have a pdf form you can contact the county and ask them to send a spreadsheet. Delinquent Tax Roll Definition: all properties where the owners have not yet paid the property taxes, irrespective of whether or not a tax lien has been issued. You can requested at tax collector s/treasurer s office.

14 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 14 Difficult to get but great list. Typically a custom request to county tax collectors office. It is difficult to get it because most counties have no idea what you are talking about. Fields to ask for: Assessor parcel number (APN) Owner name Owner name (Full Name of Owner of Record) Owner mailing address Parcel size (Acres or Square Feet) Assessed value Improvement value (should be under 10K) Use code (what property is used for) Short legal description (not crucial but helpful) Taxes owed for this year Number of years taxes are owed Total amount owed

15 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 15 Since this is custom made you can ask for whatever you want in the list. Because it is hard to get it you will need to use the Rule of 5. Need to talk to 3-5 people before you get to the right person. Often IT-department can help you. Need to get to the person who sends out the delinquent letters. When you go up to the counter you are probably going to talk to the least qualified person. They are usually there just to collect the check and get the benefits of what the state offers. Ask that person who he or she gets the database of tax delinquent people from. Typical script: You: Hi, I would like to get a list of all the properties that are currently delinquent for non-payment of property taxes. County: Ah you mean the tax lien/tax deed list. You: No, that is just part of what I mean, I mean the FULL list of all properties that currently owe back taxes not just the tax lien and tax deed list. County: Oh, we don t have that. You: Hmmm, let me ask you a question. If someone doesn t pay their property taxes, don t you send them a letter?

16 Land Profit Generator LPG Session 4 Page 16 County: Yes I guess we do. You: So, you must know who they are. Ad who is in charge of sending out these letters to the delinquent people? County: That is Sandra (or Missy, or Joe ) You: Great; I would like to talk to him/her please. SECRET TIP 1: Get in touch with the IT (Information Technology) department, they can usually help you. They usually know what you are talking about and can get that information pretty quick. They can run a custom report for you. Or will tell you whose permission they need. Can often create custom list for you in: o Excel; o CSV; or o.txt format (which is easy to import Excel). Homework: Go out and get a list for the county or counties that you chose in the previous session.