Flipping Land

Why Today is the Best Time to Invest in Land

There are many people that have been talking about the real estate bubble collapsing within the United States and there are many people that have also been talking about the ensuing global credit crunch that has come about as a result of a similar thing taking place on a national level within the United States. Both of these things are quite true in terms of events that have happened, but rather than making you turn away from investing in land, what they should really be doing is making you look forward to investing in land. The best time to invest in land is most definitely today and there are many reasons as to why this is so.

Supply and Demand

There are many things that power the economic systems of today, but in any relatively free market (and this is what most of the developed world can be considered) the mechanism that still drives prices more than anything else is what is known as supply and demand. Quite simply, supply is a term referring to the amount of a particular commodity that is available and demand refers to the amount of entities that want to acquire that particular commodity. In free market systems, when the supply is greater than the demand the price goes down (known as a buyer’s market) and when the demand is greater than the supply the price goes up (known as a seller’s market).

Just before the real estate crash within the United States, there were many people looking to purchase property and not that many properties available. This created a seller’s market within the country and one that accelerated to such a high pace that it ended up being unsustainable and collapsed in on itself. Nowadays within the United States and elsewhere around the world, there are far more properties to go around than people that want to buy them and that ultimately means that land as a commodity today is a buyer’s market. This is the main reason that the best time to invest in land is today. You can purchase it while it is cheap and then keep it when the price rises, selling it later on and acquiring a large amount of money in the process.

Results

Supply and demand is the basis for most of the world’s economic systems and that is exactly why you should invest in land when the demand is low and the supply is high, because that will eventually change.

If you want proof of this, all you have to do is look within the United States and the United Kingdom. Both of those countries have had massive real estate meltdowns in recent times that have caused land prices to plummet, but there were companies in both countries that were prepared for this. These were companies that liquidated some of their holdings a year ago in order to have those funds ready to pounce and when the buyer’s market hit they gobbled up property extremely quickly. The end result is that they now own a lot of land and when the price of land goes up (as it most definitely will at some point in the future), these companies stand to make a lot of money indeed.

This could be you.

By: Gregory Akerman

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Tax Delinquent Property Investing – County Departments Explained

I remember in my early days when I just started investing in Tax Delinquent Properties I was quite confused as to what all these different county departments actually do and how I need to use their services.

For the purpose of Investing in Tax Delinquent Properties you usually don’t work with more than 3-5 different departments which usually are:

- Treasurer / Tax Collector’s office

- Assessor

- Clerk / Recorder

- Mapping Department

- Planning and Zoning Department

Mostly you will work with the first three, and the second two only occasionally.

Here is a brief explanation of what these departments do:

1. Treasurer / Tax Collector’s office

The name might be different in your state but this is basically the office that collects the property taxes. It is that this office where you can find out how much property taxes each property owes and when the next sale (tax Lien or Tax Deed) is scheduled. Also if your state allows for purchase of Tax Liens or Tax Deeds over the counter AFTER the auction, you will be able to do this here.

2. Assessor

The County assessor’s responsibility to assess each property the value for taxation purposes. Whenever a property is being sold, the Assessor usually gets a notification of the sale price as well as some of the terms of sale. With this information he can then assess the value of all properties in the county. You might remember getting a “Property Valuation Notice” from your county Assessor telling you how much he thinks your property is worth.

In many states, the Assessor also keeps copies of all Property Maps, also commonly called Plat Maps. Instead of going to the Recorder (who keeps all official records for the county but these are often in large and weird formats) you can also often go to the Assessor who has all maps in usually more handy formats and paper sizes.

For me this is usually the first stop at a county when I am about to look at a bunch of properties. I go to the Assessor’s office, get copies of all property plat maps which helps me finding the properties I am looking for.

3. Clerk / Recorder:

This official and office keeps records of all recorded documents in the history of the county. That means all property ownership changes, Deeds, Agreements, Mortgages, Liens, Court Judgments are recorded here and kept electronically or in form of paper or micro-fish. Nowadays most counties are well advanced in their conversion from Paper and Micro-fish to Electronically scanned images but some are still in the process of converting these files. In any case and no matter what format the recorded documents exist, they are sorted by Book and Page in chronological form and will allow you to do a title search to any level of detail.

4. Mapping Department:

I personally only use the Mapping department when either the Assessor does not have copies of all Plat Maps available or more frequently when I am looking for a comprehensive County Map with all roads and other orientation points. Usually the mapping department has something like that for sale for a token amount of approx. $10.00

5. Planning and Zoning:

You will need to go to the planning and zoning department if you have questions about what is allowed to be built on the property you are buying and to check the limitations of the allowed uses. For example, if you are planning to bid on a parcel with a House at a busy intersection at Tax Sale you might want to check if this property is zoned commercial or residential. Or if you are planning to purchase a Vacant lot in the outskirts of town, you definitely want to check how this lot is zoned. Is it Residential, Commercial, or even Agricultural… depending on what it is zoned and what the surrounding plans are you might be able to re-zone it which alone can multiply the value of a property.

By: Jack Bosch

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