Zero Risk Real Estate: Creating Wealth Through Tax Liens and Tax Deeds

Setting Up a Simple System

Your system for tracking your investments doesn’t have to be complex, or expensive—just workable. The important thing is that you keep detailed records of investments and remain diligent about recording and tracking data as you proceed, not only for investment reasons, but also for tax reasons, and to just plain keep your sanity!

This could mean using various software programs designed especially for tracking tax sale investments, or it could mean taking advantage of basic tools such as Microsoft Word and Excel. For example:

1. Use a worksheet in Excel to maintain all the contact information you may need for the various tax authorities in each of the states in which you’re investing.

2. When you obtain tax sale lists, itemize the data into an Excel sheet so you can compare and contrast similar data for all properties at a glance. Some counties actually provide this in a downloadable format, which makes it really easy to track. This could include lists of the properties coming up for auction, parcel IDs, addresses, current values, types of properties, and so on. Having all this information in one place makes it much easier to pick out which properties interest you and you might want to do more research on, and which ones are just junkers.

3. Create due diligence checklist sheets that you can print out and take with you when you investigate properties. Once filled, import that data into the Excel sheet so all property information is in one place. This ...