The Hidden Gem of Tax Lien Investing with 33-Year Expert | Tony Martinez

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Speaker 5 we have a we have saying here at usla it's called price solves all issues right if we can get them at the right price we can solve just about anything that would pop up now again we can't overstate that right we can't uh not do research we know going in we're going to walk through the property and i'm going to have a rehab estimate before we make the acquisition so i'm going to know going in a really really good idea when that price quote comes back i'm going to know my numbers right the vast majority of our properties that we acquire right now the total purchase price, when we buy it directly that way, they range from about $4,000 to about $20,000.

Speaker 5 That's total purchase price. Yeah, that's insane.

Speaker 1 What is up, the Science of Flipping Family? Welcome back to another incredible episode. I have a guest that I've known for years.
It is a strategy that he has been using for over 33 years.

Speaker 1 In fact, my guest, Tony Martinez, has been the founder of the United States or U.S. Tax Len Association, U.S.
Tax Lean Association.

Speaker 1 He has done thousands of tax lien properties, buying and selling them. And in fact, I wanted him here because it's an underutilized vertical in our space.
So Tony, what's up, brother?

Speaker 5 Hey, man, how's it going? Great to be here.

Speaker 1 Super excited to have you.

Speaker 1 As I just mentioned, the reason why I think this is so valuable for our listeners and if you're watching this on YouTube is because this is a strategy that obviously after 33 years, you have proven time and time again.

Speaker 1 But not a lot of people know about this strategy within the real estate space.

Speaker 5 The whole thing is it has been around for a long time. I've been doing it for a long time.
More and more people are starting to find out about it.

Speaker 5 There's other guys out there teaching information about investing in tax liens.

Speaker 5 I find it to be not a whole lot of credible information. I mean, actual people who, there's people who are teaching and there's people like myself.
We teach, right?

Speaker 5 We show people exactly how to invest in tax foreclosed real estate and we actually do it. You know, I have,

Speaker 5 you just mentioned, I've completed over 2,500 tax deed property acquisitions since 1992 until now.

Speaker 5 And the difference for us is we have the irrefutable public record documentation to prove it. I mean, we have every single deed, right, that's been recorded with our names on it.

Speaker 5 And that's for my own portfolio. That's not investing in other people's money for them.
And so that's a big part of it that I think is really important in today's marketplace with so many,

Speaker 5 you know, out of the bad, you know, I don't know how to say it gently, but just fake gurus in the market. Sure.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, listen, one of the things that, you know, a lot of people know I went down the path of kind of like quick claim deeds and being able to stop foreclosures.

Speaker 1 And I went down that path for quite some time.

Speaker 1 And I want to relate similarities and disassociate the things that aren't necessarily similar with like what is going to be the difference between your bank normal trustee foreclosure versus maybe a tax lien property, a tax foreclosure, and the differences kind of between the two?

Speaker 5 Oh, that's a great question, man. There's so many differences.
Let's start there.

Speaker 5 There's tax sales that a lot of people go to. And right now, in my experience, the tax sales are so competitive.

Speaker 5 As you know, it's a tough market out there for real estate for a lot of people right now to find

Speaker 5 kind of distressed real estate, if you will. So people hear the word tax sale and they naturally assume like I can get a bargain.

Speaker 5 And you just have so many people showing up to these tax sales that just, they don't know what they're doing. And they're literally bidding these properties up to values that just don't make sense.

Speaker 5 So we've developed strategies over these 32 years where we're acquiring properties without having to go to a tax sale.

Speaker 5 There's multiple strategies in different markets where we're actually buying properties, tax defaulted properties directly from the county and not having to compete at an auction. So

Speaker 5 there's a very, very big difference between any other type of real estate investing, including bank foreclosures,

Speaker 5 than the strategies that we employ here at USTLA.

Speaker 5 And I'll just give you the name of what the name of one is called over-the-counter TACD property acquisitions is one of our number one strategies that we teach and that we employ ourselves.

Speaker 5 And this is a strategy where

Speaker 5 counties just have massive, massive excess inventories, properties that went to a tax sale at one time and didn't sell, and they just build up these massive inventories and they reach the point where they're just liquidating properties.

Speaker 5 Now, here's the, here's the,

Speaker 5 if there's a flying ointment, it's this, is there's too many properties on the list. For example, a property we just acquired, the list had 7,000 properties on it.

Speaker 5 Now, the challenge with the plus is there's 7,000 properties. The minus is there's 7,000 properties you have to try to figure out how to do the research on to find the great properties.

Speaker 5 And that's where our expertise comes in. So that difference is massive compared, you know, everyone else.
You know, people talk about off-market properties. Every property we acquire is off-market.

Speaker 5 They never hit the MLS. They never show up.
You know, once they're on the, on the OTC list, they never show up to an auction ever again.

Speaker 1 How did the property get to that list again?

Speaker 5 In the markets that we're, I would say, the highest level experts in, it'll start off as what's called a tax lien certificate, which means a person didn't pay their property taxes.

Speaker 5 It comes up for what's called a tax lien certificate sale and at that sale what's happening is is they're not selling the property yet they're just selling the back taxes they're selling the debt so people like you and i can come down to the tax lien certificate sale and put up the money in essence what you're doing is you're paying up paying someone else's back taxes for them in return you receive what's called the tax lien certificate and that tax lien certificate pays interest rate

Speaker 1 yeah and at some point you have the opportunity to foreclose because in the right states you take the senior lien over even banks, right?

Speaker 5 Absolutely correct.

Speaker 5 The difference here is in a lot of states that have very low interest rates and long redemption periods, thousands and thousands of those taxing certificates don't get purchased at the auction.

Speaker 5 Those taxing certificates go back into the county's inventory and they sit there, right?

Speaker 5 Well, the redemption period, that grace period that the property owner has to come in and pay after property taxes, for example, could be most of them are right around three years.

Speaker 5 Every day that they sit at the county's inventory, the redemption period for that taxing certificate is expiring.

Speaker 5 So what ends up happening is when the redemption period expires, all those taxing certificates are still sitting in the county's inventories, not generating any revenue.

Speaker 5 So what will happen is either the county will foreclose on the property themselves or they'll sell them off to another

Speaker 5 entity, either a county entity or a state entity, which converts it from a taxing certificate to a deed. And then what we're doing is we're stepping in and just buying the deeds directly.

Speaker 1 And so that's where, so one of the questions I was going to ask, where and how do you find them? So where do you go buy those deeds directly?

Speaker 5 You're going to be targeting lists at different counties. And again,

Speaker 5 it's not an easy quick explanation on targeting markets and lists and finding the lists. But just in general,

Speaker 5 what a person would be looking for, the easiest way is if you're speaking to a county or a county official, is just finding out, like, what do you do with all the properties and all the taxing certificates that don't get purchased at auction?

Speaker 5 That's really the big question that needs to be asked. Now, it takes a lot of research to do that.

Speaker 5 The difference for us is we've spent, you know, I actually made my first tax and certificate investments in November of 1991. So we've tapped into, we've been doing research ever since.

Speaker 5 So just identifying, you know, great markets to work in, knowing how to do the research. And again, just asking key questions.

Speaker 5 And so some counties do have these over-the-counter lists and a lot of counties don't. So it's just a matter of doing the research to find the right markets.

Speaker 1 Are there, so in a general sense, are there just better markets? Like, so I mentioned something I don't have 100% clarity on. Maybe you can refresh me, but there are certain states.

Speaker 1 Where a tax lien is senior to a bank lien. I don't believe it's all states, correct?

Speaker 5 No, it's all states. It is all states.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So, so there is, so is there any priority in, in what markets could be better, right? And I'll give you an example because I get asked this all the time, right? So I'm more traditional.

Speaker 1 I'm more, you know, find a property of good value, fix and flip it, buy and hold it, do the burr method, just traditional, right?

Speaker 1 But people ask me, you know, what market should I choose, Justin? And I have my answer because my answer is a lot probably simpler than yours is going to be. My answer is follow the money.

Speaker 1 Ever since the hedge funds broke into our world, which was definitely not around in 1991, let alone in 2007 when I started, when they broke into our world in, you know, 2016-ish, 2015,

Speaker 1 they had a lot more money than all of us, right? So they were able to break into markets like Phoenix, which crushed me,

Speaker 1 you know, the Vegas, the Phoenix, the Dallas, all these different. And so I just started to say, okay, I'm going to go follow the big boy money.

Speaker 1 And so now I always suggest markets like the Sun Belt in a more traditional real estate investing manner fix and flip buy and hold North Carolina South Carolina Florida Alabama Georgia Tennessee Texas Oklahoma I love these markets for the more traditional right not saying you're not traditional but the vertical is that the way to acquire is a little different

Speaker 12 10 years from today Lisa Schneider will trade in her office job to become the leader of a pack of dogs as the owner of her own dog rescue that is a second act made possible by the reskilling courses Lisa's taking now with AARP to help make sure her income lives as long as she does.

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Speaker 4 Learn more at AARP.org slash skills.

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Speaker 1 At participating McDonald's. Do you have a reason behind the markets you choose? Like, what's your answer?

Speaker 5 Ironically,

Speaker 5 some of the very same markets that you just mentioned, but ours are really based upon how the law, because the difference for us, the laws that pertain to property taxes are completely different in every market.

Speaker 5 So it's not like that. If you know fixing and flipping in.
Texas, you know fixing and flipping in Oklahoma, right? It's the same laws, rules, regulation.

Speaker 5 It's not like that in the tax deal market, which is a plus and a minus.

Speaker 5 It's a plus for us because, you know, again, no offense, but people in general are lazy and they're not going to go do the research to figure out the differences. That's right.
We're okay with that.

Speaker 5 We love that, actually.

Speaker 5 And so for us, sometimes it is the type of laws, rules, and regulation that a particular market has.

Speaker 5 And then another one is based on inventory. Like sometimes the tough thing for us to answer the question for market conditions,

Speaker 5 they shift, right? They shift based upon what's available on the list, you know, this year. So I did a bunch of investing in Billings, Montana, right?

Speaker 5 And then just the list, you know, the properties that were coming up in the future years just weren't that good. So we just stopped investing there.

Speaker 5 You know, I've done a bunch of investing, I mean, hundreds of properties bought and sold in Nebraska, right? But I haven't invested in Nebraska in 10 years.

Speaker 5 And so it just kind of shifts, it just kind of shifts based upon what's available in the marketplace. So that's one thing.
And that's very simple too.

Speaker 5 It's not that difficult to figure that out because

Speaker 5 you can't, you know, list of taxing certificates and list of tax foreclosed real estate, they're required by law to be made available to the general public.

Speaker 5 So if there's an auction coming up, the county has to be make it easily available, readily available to the general public at least 30 days prior to the auction.

Speaker 5 So that's not a, you know, it's not a big secret. And the

Speaker 5 so being able to do is contact the county, figure out when their auctions are, and

Speaker 5 request their list and seeing if there's anything good on it, doing the research, seeing if it's good on it, that's another part of it. And then certain markets,

Speaker 5 they just have a history of having massive inventories.

Speaker 5 And so, you know, is that good or bad? You know, because every, it's a black name, right? So it's actually, it's actually good and bad, good and bad.

Speaker 5 The bad thing is for someone new who doesn't know what what they're doing, doesn't know how to do the research, you know, they download a list and it has 18,000 properties on it.

Speaker 5 They're just, you know, they're going to be stuck for a little bit, right?

Speaker 5 And so it does take an expertise and it doesn't take a high level. Listen, you don't need an NBA to do this.

Speaker 5 What you do need is you do need systems and you do need processes based upon the markets that you're in. And that is what we do here at USTLA.

Speaker 5 And so, but right now, I'll just tell you in general, right now, let me tell you where we have active acquisitions going right now.

Speaker 5 And so this would mean,

Speaker 5 I'm talking 2024, 2025.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 that doesn't mean that in 2026, they're going to be exactly the same. But I'll give you a general sense that people will know.

Speaker 5 We have holdings in Ohio.

Speaker 5 We have holdings in Missouri. We have holdings in, you know, I'm talking about recent acquisitions.
We have holdings in, uh Alabama, like you talked about, Mississippi, like you also discussed,

Speaker 5 off off the top of my head. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 we'll continue to, those are markets that I can tell you right now that we will definitely be focused on for 2025.

Speaker 5 We've done some very, very small acquisitions in Michigan in 2024. And we're going to be looking in Michigan this year.
And

Speaker 1 we'll see how that goes. So I know you and I, you know, we've known each other for years and we were going back and forth via tax.

Speaker 1 You're like, look at this property I just picked up for like five grand.

Speaker 5 And it wasn't exactly five grand, but it was 4,000 or 5,000, some change like how so when you go to these the the county i think it's a company that actually turns it into a deed right no it's actually it's actually it's either they're still either county or state entities so do you just make an offer in the same function or do they say hey tony if you want it it's four thousand eight hundred and ninety one thousand dollars like what how does that work yeah in those markets like you just discussed the way it works is you do all the research looks like a great deal and once we've done all the research what you're doing is you're submitting an application so you fill out this application, you submit it, let's say it's a state entity or a county entity, doesn't really matter.

Speaker 5 And what they're going to do is they're going to send you back what's called a price quote. Now, depending on the market,

Speaker 5 that price quote, all they're really doing in certain markets is they're punching that address in and they're pulling up all the back taxes, penalties, and interest owed.

Speaker 5 Your price is the back taxes, penalties, and interest old. Not a penny more, not a penny less.
Other markets, they take their tax assessed value,

Speaker 5 which is super low because it's been sitting there for so many years, right?

Speaker 5 With no taxes being paid on it. And they take, it's 50% of the tax assessed value.
So sometimes the tax assessed values on some of these properties, you know, the tax assessed value could be $22,000.

Speaker 5 It could be $18,000.

Speaker 5 So we're still acquiring, even when they considered a tax assessed value of $22,000, we're acquiring a property for $11,000 free and clear with no mortgage on it and no liens on it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 that's incredible. I mean, I've bought properties at really great discounts, but when you're able to get $100,000 property or thereabouts, right? And you can pay five grand for it.

Speaker 1 I mean, you just, you have a winner. You can't lose in a general sense, right?

Speaker 5 In a general sense, like, you know, we have a, we have a saying here at USLA, it's called price solves all issues, right? If we can get them at the right price, we can solve just about anything

Speaker 5 that would pop up. Now, again, we can't overstate that, right? We can't not do research.
We know going in, right? So when we do our research process, we're very thorough, dude.

Speaker 5 We're super, super meticulous. We have current photos of the properties.

Speaker 5 If it's vacant, we're going to have pictures all around the property. We're going to have

Speaker 5 an aerial photo, a current aerial photo of the property.

Speaker 5 If it's...

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 you're not supposed to really walk in them, but if we can get in them,

Speaker 5 we're going to walk through the property and I'm going to have a rehab estimate before we make the acquisition. So I'm going to know going in a really, really good idea.

Speaker 5 When that price quote comes back, I'm going to know my numbers.

Speaker 5 The vast majority of our properties that we acquire right now, the total purchase price, when we buy it directly that way, they range from about $4,000 to about $20,000. That's total purchase price.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's insane. And so what would stop someone, let's just say you have a million dollars in cash.

Speaker 1 from going out and say, I'm just going to go buy it bulk. I mean, is there any particular reason you'd say that person's not really thinking? And here's why.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Because remember you're talking about, you're like,

Speaker 1 well, if they had a list of 300, right, tax deeds that you could go buy for five grand, seven grand, eight grand, and someone could say, I'm going to go take a million of my cash and dump that it.

Speaker 1 Why would someone not want to do that?

Speaker 5 I guess that's another question. Well, if there's, if there's 300 properties on the list,

Speaker 5 most of the properties on the list, and I say most, over 50%,

Speaker 5 I mean, and far more than that, you're not going to want to buy them. They're burned out, right? They're industrial properties.
They're raw land in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 5 Every derogatory, you got to understand, tax sale properties have problems, period in the story. More problems than any other category of real estate out there.
So what

Speaker 5 we have to navigate are all those crappy properties and weed them all the way off our list and end up with what we call our short list of things that are possibilities.

Speaker 5 And there's just no way, you know, just some random person, just because they happen to have a million dollars dollars is going to grab a list that we grab and be able to identify a million dollars worth of properties to acquire and just go out and buy it and bowl.

Speaker 1 That makes sense at least, right? I guess in theory, they could go do it, but then they're going to end up with some rural land pieces and they're going to end up with just a bunch of nonsense.

Speaker 1 And there's a lot of similarity to what you've already said within just a normal traditional real estate business in the fix and flip business and buy and hold business, right?

Speaker 1 So even when we were going back and forth via text, again, let's just say you bought it for $4,800 and I think you said you put it in roughly $30,000 and the home was worth $80,000.

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 1 that's exactly what normal, and I'm not saying tax liens is not normal. It's just a different way of acquiring it.

Speaker 1 But there's a lot of the same similarity. So if you learn what Tony does, and by the way, Tony,

Speaker 1 where can they learn more about you, US, TLA? Like, where do you want to have them go?

Speaker 1 Because if you can learn from the expert, Tony, I am not the expert in this, Tony is, then you can understand how to find properties that, by the way, Tony has the golden goose, meaning like 99% of my world is not going to go do what Tony does.

Speaker 1 So if you want to learn what Tony does, go find Tony. And so where do we want them to go find you real quick?

Speaker 5 I think the best thing to do,

Speaker 5 I have a free crash course online. And what I, the way I designed it is, you know, I take all the, you know, again, I'm just going to tell you like there's so much crap information out there

Speaker 5 and so many fake gurus in the taxing space. The one thing I do to separate myself is I I just put out information that's better for free that's better than what they charge for.

Speaker 5 And so if they go to freecrashcourse.com, that's freecrashcourse.com. There's a three-module training that I put together.

Speaker 5 And I promise you, if they'll watch one module, the first module, they will learn more. valid information in that one module.

Speaker 5 It's about, it's not even 30 minutes long than they will find anywhere else on the internet.

Speaker 5 And real case studies, copies of deeds, I mean, real validation showing exactly what we do and how we do it. And free crashcourse.com.
Yeah, freecrashcourse.com.

Speaker 1 And so there's a lot of similarities in what we're doing.

Speaker 1 You just have the right way to find a deeply discounted property, right? So even when I'm coaching my community, we're always talking about motivation and getting the right number.

Speaker 1 There's no difference there, but you have the secret sauce. And how do you find that actual asset?

Speaker 1 So when you have a list, right, i'm assuming you treat it very similar to if i had pulled a list of homes in any level of neighborhood i want to know the type of asset it is i want to know that how much construction i'm going to need i want to see some picture right is there any difference once you kind of have the list

Speaker 12 10 years from today lisa schneider will trade in her office job to become the leader of a pack of dogs as the owner of her own dog rescue that is a second act made possible by the reskilling courses lisa's taking now with aarp to help make sure her income lives as long as she does.

Speaker 20 And she can finally run with the big dogs and the small dogs who just think they're big dogs.

Speaker 22 That's why the younger you are, the more you need AARP.

Speaker 4 Learn more at AARP.org slash skills.

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Speaker 5 Are you looking at the same?

Speaker 5 Well, there's...

Speaker 5 The way our lists come, the challenge is like some lists don't even have, you'll have a list of, you know, 800 properties and there's no physical address so we have to start with a property number and take that property number and from that property number one of those digits right it can be a two digit or three digit is going to tell what type of asset class it is you know it's going to tell whether it's land a single family residential industrial and so we have to kind of dig and do some research find the key to that property number and then sort our list based upon that to start off with.

Speaker 5 So our list and the other challenge for us,

Speaker 5 lists vary from county to county. You know, what they put on the list is going to vary county to county.
And so really you have to understand what each column means.

Speaker 5 And so that's one thing that's very different. It's not just like, hey, here's a list of great properties with all the information that's going to be the same on every single list.

Speaker 5 But again, that's just something that. Some of this, and I know it sounds like, oh man, this is just like too much of a pain in the ass to really do.
And it really isn't, man. It's just, it's new.

Speaker 5 People aren't familiar with it. So it sounds like a big pain in the ass.

Speaker 5 And it can be if you don't know what you're doing. Of course, it's going to, of course.

Speaker 1 You send me a list like that, Tony, after 18 years of business. I'm still going to go, I don't, I don't even know what to do here.

Speaker 5 I don't have to afford, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, but if you and I sat down for a few hours and I pointed everything out, at least in that market, dude, you'd go, okay, I got it now.

Speaker 5 I can sort this list. And then once you sort the list for us on tax sale properties, we have a 14-point research process.
So you have to go through 14 more points once you identify the property.

Speaker 5 um and part of that is the analysis and that's really going to tell you okay this is this is worth pursuing a little bit further and then when you get that final price quote right comes in now you can get all your actual numbers in place

Speaker 5 um and it it doesn't take forever and that's one thing that we do in our you know in the trainings that people invest in here at usdla uh we'll do a a live training like this a zoom training and we actually walk people through the we do a live demonstration we download a list right online online, and we walk them through the actual research process.

Speaker 5 And this will be for an actual upcoming auction, right? That's going to be coming up in the next 30 days. And we show people exactly how to do the research.
And that's a big,

Speaker 1 when you say the word auction, I bought a lot of homes at auction down in Phoenix in the more traditional sense, right? So

Speaker 1 are your members or students, are they looking at making bids at auction?

Speaker 1 Or are you suggesting or advising or coaching to wait till it gets turned over to that other entity and then buy the deed from the other entity?

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 we start all of our beginners and even people who have experience investing in real estate, we have what's called a basic strategy. It's a bunch of criteria for it.

Speaker 5 We start everybody off at over the counter first.

Speaker 5 We just want someone to get a really great deal under their belt, build their confidence, give them a way to have a big win up front and not only just have a big win, but really start to master that research process.

Speaker 5 A lot of people just, I will tell you, dude, I can't remember, and I seriously can't remember the last time I bought a property at a live auction.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So when you said over the counter, you meant once it's already turned into a deed, go to the counter, buy the deed, be done, right?

Speaker 5 That's it.

Speaker 1 And then your strategy, again, kind of with the similarities, because I want people to understand, this is no different than what I teach, except the major except is he's targeting one very niche type of list that there takes a system, a structure, and a process that he is the expert at.

Speaker 1 I am not.

Speaker 5 He is.

Speaker 1 And then you can burr the property, you can fix and flip the property. You can keep it as a long-term.
Like, there's no difference at that point, correct?

Speaker 5 Yeah. So, I mean,

Speaker 5 we have three main things that we do with our properties. A lot of them, we just sell, we sell a lot of properties.
We just, we're actually wholesaling to wholesalers right now.

Speaker 5 Wholesalers are looking for great deals, they're struggling to find them. Um, I'll give you some examples.

Speaker 5 I actually pulled some up on my computer specifically to talk to you about a recent acquisition, $7,560.

Speaker 5 Just turn all we do is we clean them up, right? We clean them out, do the landscape, and then turn around and sold it for $30,000. I love that.
That's a very good thing.

Speaker 5 Second one, so our new clients do a lot of sell-as-is because a lot of times, you know, they're not, our clients, you know, probably like your students as well, they're not necessarily living in the neighborhood where they're doing these deals, right?

Speaker 5 That's right. And

Speaker 5 our clients aren't either. And so to get a person comfortable investing out of state, it's best to start them off with just a sell as is, right? So we just.

Speaker 1 Tony, I'm going to tell you now. Next thing we got to do after this episode is you got to send me all your deals.
Cause I'm a buyer, right? Like a real buyer. And so it's just as hard for me.

Speaker 1 Yes, I have a marketing budget. Yes, I have a team.
Finding good deals is still hard finding good deals. So the next conversation we're going to have, partner, is like, hey, what do you got?

Speaker 1 Like, I need to buy some stuff. Right.
So that'll be the next.

Speaker 5 Yeah. So I'll just tell you two more.
This is actually one of one of my clients. I wanted to show some or talk about some that my clients did.

Speaker 5 And he's actually, he's been a client for a few years now. So he's a little bit more advanced and knows what he's doing but he sold that last property bought it for 756 he sold it for 30.

Speaker 5 This is all this is all in one month.

Speaker 5 Bought a second one and he paid a 8,026

Speaker 5 and sold it for 22,000.

Speaker 5 And then the third one he sold that month. He bought it for 8,851, sold it for 30

Speaker 5 and all in one month. I mean, that's like 70,000.

Speaker 1 So he basically flipped nine grand three times and made like a hundred grand.

Speaker 5 Yeah, just about

Speaker 1 right because the most expensive one you said was 8800 so let's just round that up to nine grand yeah he bought one flipped it for 30 bought one flipped it for 22 bought one flipped it for 30 right so you're just go 30 30 30 for sake of example yeah and it's not that clean but call 85 000 and he took the same nine grand he had from the beginning and just flipped it each time right so he needed less than 10 grand in his pocket to do this business and he made 85 000 and listen man and i know we're on a podcast right but if we if we were where i could actually show i could show the picture of the property, the actual deed, what he paid for it,

Speaker 5 and then all the closing statements for each one of those deals. Like we don't show case studies unless we have the supporting documentation.

Speaker 5 We just have a big thorn on our side where

Speaker 5 there's so many guys that are so full of crap in the marketplace. And we'll just tell people if they can't prove it, why would you believe it?

Speaker 1 Well, I agree 100%. And you and I are been in this business for a long time.
And there's a lot of newbies to our business of education.

Speaker 1 And, you know, it's because they go and do a couple of deals and then they want to educate.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 1 And they think it's easier to be a leader than an educator. And that's just not the truth either.
Right. And so

Speaker 1 I can appreciate that. And again, what is the freecrashcourse.com, right? Freecrashcourse.com.
Part of that is you actually showing what we're talking about, right?

Speaker 1 You're showing deals, HUDs, settlement statements, like you're actually showing that to say, guys, I'm actually doing this business. My members are actually doing this business.

Speaker 5 i'm not teaching theory yeah so the other thing we do in that crash course is things like you know when you buy a property for call it 7 500 well it's public record well zillow pulls you know when zillow shows what a property sold for right they pull from the public records so i show like if i talk about a client bought a property for 7500

Speaker 5 i show that on that it showed up on zillow that it was actually acquired for 7500 so they'll when they go through this crash course

Speaker 5 you guys that are listening, when you go through this crash course, I want you to call me on it. Any case study I show you,

Speaker 5 you'll see the supporting documentation. Sometimes I'm showing you the actual deed and

Speaker 5 what the acquisition price is right on a recorded deed.

Speaker 5 So everything's there, man. Yeah, which is great.

Speaker 1 And again, I think in the age of YouTube and podcasts and everyone getting very squirrely, right?

Speaker 1 I think that the challenge is people get very squirrely about where to start, what to do, how to handle the real estate space, because there's so many different things now, right?

Speaker 1 Innovation and land and tax liens. And it's just a lot, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Being able to find a niche that people,

Speaker 1 it isn't easy for people to enter. Not saying what you're doing, Tony, is difficult, but there's layers deeper than just pulling a list from, you know, any list provider and start cold calling, right?

Speaker 1 You're a layer or two deeper than that. Then you're going to find some gold that most people won't find, right?

Speaker 5 And that's the reality. Yeah, listen, so many of our new clients are just frustrated with the general real estate investment marketplace.

Speaker 5 And really, the people who already know, right, have put in quality effort, right? They're already driven. They work hard.
They're willing to work hard at something.

Speaker 5 And they're looking for something where they can work hard. And it's worth it.
Right.

Speaker 5 You know, that's really the people who are doing really well in our program right now.

Speaker 1 Let me ask you another, you know, as most coaches will say, they'll suggest certain lists to pull, lists to work, cold call, direct mail, whatever the MBD.

Speaker 1 So these lists on like REI lead machine or prop stream or batch leads or any name the name, right? When they go and see tax liens,

Speaker 1 what are they seeing? What are you advising against? What should they do? What shouldn't they be doing when they see tax liens on a list provider?

Speaker 5 They should be concerned. Okay.
So

Speaker 5 if they see a tax lien on, you know,

Speaker 5 they pull and they see a 30%

Speaker 5 or whatever. Tax liens, right?

Speaker 1 The question is, like, they go to, you know, PropStream or they go to Batch Leads, and there's a list that if you click it, it's all the tax liens in so-and-so city, Dallas, Texas,

Speaker 1 wherever. And so there's 2,000 of them.
Like, what can they do? What should they do? Where is it at in the phase?

Speaker 5 Like, how did they get recorded and grabbed by batch leads or prop stream or any of these providers where is that property at yeah i i wouldn't i wouldn't i wouldn't rely on those lists and the reason why is you just we we there's no way for us from pulling that list to know where in the process those properties are at

Speaker 5 it if you're not getting them directly from the county i'd be concerned yeah okay and that's the answer i was kind of looking for and hoping for too is like

Speaker 1 you know people are always saying find motivated sellers and use tax liens. That's a great lien because, you know, they're senior to the bank lien.

Speaker 1 You're not wrong, but you don't know where in this trajectory it is. And a lot of these homeowners can make

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Speaker 1 Up the tax debt, right?

Speaker 1 And you don't know if it's going to foreclosure. So I think there's a lot of unknowns.
I don't, would you say it's a bad list, though?

Speaker 1 I don't know if I'd say it's a bad list, but it may not get you to where Tony would suggest to get.

Speaker 5 The big variable is this.

Speaker 5 Those tax liens, in a lot of those states where you see those tax liens, they might only be year delinquent under property taxes and

Speaker 5 they're going to pay it off yes and that's that's really it does not point to a motivated seller at all

Speaker 5 understanding if it's a decent property i mean if it's a decent property and it happens to be a person's primary residence i can tell you right now they're paying it off right no one loses and i'll just tell you in general When you start talking about houses in the $300,000 and $400,000 and $500,000 and $600,000 above price point and it's a person's primary residence, you get zero of those that don't redeem.

Speaker 5 They all redeem.

Speaker 5 No one in their right mind is ever going to lose a valuable property like that for a few thousand dollars in back taxes. Just

Speaker 5 it doesn't happen. Now, the reason why people

Speaker 5 think that that's a possibility is because there are some jerks out there implying that that's the case, and it's just not. It never has been.

Speaker 1 Would you say if there was a

Speaker 1 landlord that had a tax lien at a state landlord with a tax lien that might be a better filter

Speaker 5 it would be a better filter but again you're still gambling because um it could be a first you know they could be just delinquent one year or even less right you don't know when they're pulling the list they could be delinquent for 30 days and in on day 60 they're going to get a paycheck and pay it off right you just don't know where it is yeah yeah there's you you was you would really spin your wheels for a long time on those lists man when you started talking about you know for for me and especially after all these years i'm just going after properties I know I'm going to acquire.

Speaker 5 I'm not playing this, you know, let me look at a lien and hope someone doesn't pay their property taxes. That's just not reality.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I like that you're not just going to the auction to bid on the certificate or, you know, buy that. So let's talk about that a little bit.
I think that might even be a little bit of a known

Speaker 5 vertical or model, right?

Speaker 1 Is buying tax liens for the return, right?

Speaker 5 Talk to that. Like, how do you look at that?

Speaker 1 How do you view that? What are your thoughts on it?

Speaker 5 Again,

Speaker 5 the way it's being portrayed in the marketplace is bullcrap. And what I mean by that is, listen,

Speaker 5 people are, you know, there's literally ads out there right now by other people saying average Americans are getting rich because they're earning these double digit returns on taxing certificates.

Speaker 5 I can tell you right now, people aren't getting rich from double digit returns because think about it.

Speaker 5 Let's say you had $100,000 and most of my clients don't start off with $100,000 cash sitting in the bank, but let's say they did. And you invested in a tax lien certificate and it paid 18% interest.

Speaker 5 Okay. So you made $18,000 for the year.

Speaker 5 That's below the poverty line in America.

Speaker 5 If you wanted to earn a six-figure income, you'd have to invest a half a million dollars to earn a six-figure income, earning interest only.

Speaker 5 And so there's so many other variables on top of that. That's if you got the full interest rate.
When you go to a tax lien certificate sale, you're bidding on the tax lien.

Speaker 5 And what that means, like in Florida, where you live, they opened the bid at 18%,

Speaker 5 but then they bid it down. And the person willing to accept the lowest interest rate is the successful bidder.

Speaker 5 Well, historically, if you average it out across the board in the state of Florida, you're looking at a 5% interest rate. Wow.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Wow. And

Speaker 5 that's a known statistic.

Speaker 1 You're not even keeping up with inflation at that point.

Speaker 5 You're not. And here's the other challenge.
Let's say you invested in a taxing certificate in Florida, and let's say you got the entire 18%. Well, it's annualized.

Speaker 5 So if the property owner redeems in month six, you got 9%.

Speaker 5 And then you have to go figure out reinvesting the capital again. And so I would just tell you right now, there is no one truly getting rich investing in the tax liens

Speaker 5 against properties.

Speaker 5 If they are, I'd like to see the math on how they're doing it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And then I guess the only upside, if someone were to do that, is at some point foreclose on them if you don't get paid, type of idea.

Speaker 5 And again, so the other challenge with that is so people are going to sit around and wait two or three years just hoping, just hoping, please don't pay your property taxes. Right.

Speaker 5 And that's just, you know, for from a wealth building strategy standpoint, sitting around and waiting, hoping for someone to not pay their property taxes is not a good strategy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So when you go, and everyone needs to go to freecrashcourse.com, watch what he does in his three modules.

Speaker 1 But when you do go and acquire this, let's just use the deal that I'm thinking about that you text me, like, look at what I just did.

Speaker 1 You buy it for $4,300.

Speaker 1 Can you wholesale it before you actually have to fund it or do you have to fund it?

Speaker 5 Yeah, fund it.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 And can you use like transactional funding if you had a buyer already for, let's just say, you call your friend and say, hey, dude, you're going to love this flip.

Speaker 1 You know, I'll sell it to you for 20 grand. And he's like, yeah, bro, I'm in.
You go fund it for 24, 48 hours of transactional funding and sell it off. Are there any regulations on length, right?

Speaker 5 Like at all? No, there's no real regulations. When the price quote comes in, though, you have 10 days to fund it.
Okay.

Speaker 5 They give you a 10-day. So, what we do, we do all the research in advance and all the way down to like, we know we're going to buy it if we get if this price quote comes in

Speaker 5 and the price comes in not ridiculous and

Speaker 5 your number. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Then, you know, once it comes in,

Speaker 5 we know we're going to fund it.

Speaker 1 That's great. And then you can just resell it.
You can put it on the MLS. You do it.
You own the home.

Speaker 5 You're now the owner. You're now the owner.

Speaker 1 And you're getting at such deep. I mean, in my world, and I am really good at what I do.
There's no properties I'm buying for five grand or six grand or eight grand or like your student.

Speaker 1 He's buying, he bought three properties all for under nine grand. Like that doesn't exist in my world.
I don't care what market. I don't care how bad the condition.
It just doesn't exist.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 1 And so I can't kind of emphasize this enough and why I'm excited to have you is this is this is a very real strategy. You've been doing it for 31 years.

Speaker 5 Right. And,

Speaker 1 you know, so there's people who talk about it and then there's people who do it. So I can vouch for my guy Tony, known each other for years now.
And, you know, freecrashcourse.com.

Speaker 1 Where else do you maybe want to push them or have them be, or is that kind of the main place of point of confidence?

Speaker 5 That would be where they can get my crash course. They just want to go to our website and just look at just a bunch of general information about investing in tax, I mean

Speaker 5 high-quality articles there that explain the process and more information.

Speaker 5 They can just go to US TaxingAssociation.com, US TaxLeanAsociation.com, just Google it and we'll pop up and just click on our website and you can get a bunch of information there as well.

Speaker 5 And then

Speaker 5 the crash course will give them a really, really great

Speaker 5 overview of of exactly the strategies we teach.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was just going to highlight that one last time.

Speaker 1 Like, if you want to actually see, you know, we're doing a podcast right now, but if you want to see some of these case studies, you actually feature them. You show them.
You show HUDs.

Speaker 1 You show deals. You show this again to vouch for actually really doing the business versus just talking about it.

Speaker 5 Absolutely man. Yeah.
It'd be great for them to see it.

Speaker 1 Well, Tony, I appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 1 Excited for all my listeners, all my viewers to understand this strategy because, like I said, I've done this a long time and I'm not buying properties for five, six, seven, eight, nine thousand dollars, right?

Speaker 5 Yep, absolutely.

Speaker 1 And you are and your and your clients are, right? And your members are.

Speaker 5 And that's really important.

Speaker 1 It's one thing for us to do it. It's another thing for our members to be able to do what we're able to do and to find a path to do that.
So thank you for coming on, my friend. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 Go to freecrashcourse.com. And if you thought this was worth sharing, then please do share this with at least two of your friends and be ready for the next episode.
Tony, I appreciate you.

Speaker 5 I really thanks, Justin. Appreciate you too, man.

Speaker 1 Bye, y'all. See you on the next episode.

Speaker 5 Peace.

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