In Tax Delinquent Investment, it is important that you have a Tax Roll List at hand. This is usually encoded in Microsoft Excel or any spreadsheet program. When you have this list, the next thing that you need to do is to sort it down. This means that you need to filter down the list of properties and extract the properties which do not qualify with your criteria. The first thing that you must do is look at the value of the property. There are two ways of getting this. You can either get this by calculating the assessment ratio of the property’s assessed value to the market value according to the assessor or by looking up recent sale prices in the area of your property and comparing value.
This is an example of how you find the value using the assessors assessed value. First you will need to contact the county you are working in and ask the assessor if the assessed value is a percentage of the market value and if it is what is the ratio? Most counties have a thumb rule they go by. Like for instance a county’s assessed value may be generally 3% of the market value. So in that case if you are looking at a property record where the assess values are $300, $1000 and $200 you know that the properties are worth around $10,000, 16,600 and 33,300. These quick calculations can assist you in making a quick decisions on multiple properties.
Now most counties also have a field in their database usually called something like “Last Sale Price” and “Last Sale Date”. You will also need to know where the properties are located. If the county has these 3 pieces of information they you can sort the properties by area, size and improvement value. Find at least 5 properties that are similar to yours and average there last sale prices. Another way to do this is to simply call a realtor and ask them to send you some listings in the area of you property.
No matter what your investment goals are, it is always best to have all the necessary data to make an educated decision. It cuts out any surprises and you pretty much know what to expect. You cut out many of your risks and you are able to manage your own budget requirements and most importantly you will be able to evaluate hundreds of properties quickly and be able to effectively pinpoint the gems to go after.