You can make lot of money through real estate investment by honing your skills in searching for the good properties through eccentric sources like public records. You need special skills to master the technique of examining public records. Getting trained for real estate attorney may also help. Below given are the three key areas of public records you could use for real estate investing.
1. The tax evaluator’s office. The records available in tax evaluator’s office give you information about who is paying the taxes on real estate you are interested in. You could also get information on the property whether it is on rent or is owner occupied. Real estate investment property rentals would also have the tax bill going to the particular address. Since it is landlord who would like to receive the tax information and not the tenant, the tax bill is normally mailed to the landlord’s address. Rental investment property will not qualify for homestead exemptions; thus, if there is none, then the property is rental.
Once you have identified the property for real estate investment, you need to check the mailing address for the tax bill and use the exemption column to identify the real estate property owner and his name. After getting the owner’s name and his mailing address, send out your own proposal or deal on your letterhead to the tax bill mailing address. If he is a real motivated seller, the deal would work out in your favor.
2. The record room. A real estate investor would find a helpful trip to the real investment property record room, or recorder’s office in some other states, or the clerk of the court. This is the place of the courthouse where the deeds are finally filed. Check the most recent deed filed for the real estate property you have identified for your investment purposes, and see who holds the title for it. Look at the latest three most recent deeds in the chain of title of the same real estate property to create and establish ownership of a given piece of investment property. The following example would clear the concept. Mr. A sold the property to Mr. B in March 1991. Mr. B sells it to Ms. C in April 1996. Ms. C further sells it to Mr. D in October 1999. You would find Mr. D’s name on the title sheet, establishing him as the existing investment property owner. Note their names and go on to the next destination for final knowledge on the real estate investment property.
3. The probate court. Go to the local county probate court and look into the real estate indices. Find the records concerning the names of the property holders. The court records would have complete addresses for each person, as they must have been given very legal notice of the proceedings for change of title deed on real estate property transfer. Sometimes the tax records may not reflect the latest updated and hence might not reflect the true, present owner. The tax records might reflect an order of the probate court, but the deed might not have been finally filed in the record room. So get the real mailing address by inspecting the probate court estate record. Send your business proposal to the right owner of the real estate property.
Real estate investing could be made very easier if a real estate investor uses unconventional sources to identify properties for buying. However, it is not necessary that one should make every deal based on public records. The use of public records gives you a head start while dealing with any abandoned property, rental property with truant landlords, and few other special types of properties with no known owner.
Sign up for my course and I will show you step by step how to use the records office online to get deals.