Tax Delinquent Property Investing - County Departments Explained

I remember in my early days, when I started to invest in tax delinquent properties was rather confused by what all these different provincial departments actually do and how I use their services.

For the purposes of Investing in Real Estate tax Delinquent usually do not work with more than 3-5 different departments which are usually:

- Treasurer / Tax Collector 's Office

- Councillor

- Clerk / Recorder

- Mapping Department

- Planning and Zoning Department

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

Here is a brief explanation of what these departments do:

1. Treasurer / Tax Collector office

The name may be different in your state, but this is essentially an office that collects property taxes. And 'this office where you can find out how much property taxes each property should and when the next sale (Tax Lien and Tax Deed) is provided. Furthermore, if your state allows for the purchase of tax liens or tax deeds over the counter after the auction, will be able to do that here.

2. Assessor

The county assessor is responsible for assessing each property value for tax purposes. Each time a property is sold, the assessor usually gets a notification of the sale price as well as some of the conditions of sale. With this information we can then evaluate the value of all property in the county. You may remember getting a "Building Notice" from your county assessor that tells you how you think the property is worth.

In many states, the Assessor also holds copies of all maps of the property, also commonly called the Plat Maps. Instead of going to the recorder (which keeps all official documents in the county, but these are often large size and strange) you can often get the Deputy Mayor who has all the maps in formats more generally on hand and formats of paper.

To me this is usually the first stop in a county when I'm watching a group of properties. I go to the office of the assessor, to obtain copies of maps of properties across all platforms, which helps me find the properties I'm looking for.

3. Clerk / Recorder:

This officer and the office keeps track of all documents recorded in the history of the county. This means that all changes of ownership of property, deeds, agreements, mortgages, liens, judgments are recorded here and stored in electronic or paper or micro-fish. Nowadays most of the counties are well advanced in their conversion from paper and Micro-fish for the scanned images electronically, but some are still in the process of converting these files. In any case and regardless of the format of the documents stored there, they are sorted by book and page in chronological order and allows you to do a title search at any level of detail.

4. Mapping Department:

I personally use the mapping service is when the alderman has no copies of all available maps Plat or more frequently when I'm looking for a complete map with all County roads and points of other orientation. Usually the mapping department has something similar on sale for a token amount of approx. $ 10.00

5. Planning and Zoning:

You need to go to the department of planning and zoning, if you have questions about what is allowed to be built on the property you are buying and check the limitations of permitted uses. For example, if you plan to bid for a parcel with a house in a busy intersection in Sale Tax you might want to check if this property is zoned commercial or residential. Or, if you intend to buy a vacant lot on the outskirts of the city, you definitely want to see how this lot is zoned. And 'residential, commercial, agricultural or even ... depending on what is divided into zones and which are the surrounding floors are you might be able to re-zone of it that alone can multiply the value of a property .......