Found A Property 3 Years Deliquent...
And I'm pretty sure these folks are dead, and the person the county was sending the tax bill to is nowhere to be found. I have been doing some investing, but this the first time I've encountered this situation. Do I bring the taxes up to date? Or wait on the tax sale? Or both?
If anyone can steer me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.
If you bring the taxes up to date you have just done some stranger a very big favor.
It didnt you any right to ownership did it?
find the owner. Buy the deed.
Or, wait for an auction.
who else could convey ownership to you?
ONLY The present owner, or the future owner - being the tax authority after foreclosing.
The only way that paying the taxes could do you any good before buying the deed is if your state has a law where it would give you an interest in the property.
In texas if you squat in the property for 14 years you can file for ownership of the property. If you pay taxes you can reduce the time to 7 years.
paulabe713------------------
What you do should be, it seems to me, shaped by the circumstances.
What typically happens at tax sales in this location? If there not is a lot of competion, you might find waiting for the tax sale to be sensible. Here in CA these days there are huge numbers of people going to tax sales and driving up prices, sometimes to ridiculous levels. About four or five days ago I posted a description of a tax sale in El Dorado County CA that I attended in November. Reading that post can be entertaining and probably even educational.
If you expect strong competition at the tax sale, it might well make sense to do an "adverse possession" on the property. This is the legal phrase for "squatting" on a property, as mentioned by another poster. You can, legally, take over somebody else's property, pay the taxes, and some years later become the legal owner of the property by filing an adverse possession quiet title lawsuit and getting a decree of ownership.
However, it is an approach which is not to be used lightly, in my opinion. You need to study the state adverse possession law very carefully and follow it so you can get a good deed to the property.
Having the title owners dead is a good beginning. But then there is the question of heirs. You need to be sure that either there are no heirs or that the heirs are not doing anything about the property. A first step is to see if there has been filed any probate cases in court for the estate of the late owners. If there is one or are a couple, you can see who the heirs are and approach them about buying the property from them after they get title through the estate. You could even loan them money to pay the taxes and have a loan against the property, if the personal representative of the estate agrees to this.
Try to talk to people who might know about heirs. This would be neighbors of the property or where the owners lived. It might be other people with the same last name. Scout around a bit. You would not want to start doing an adverse possession of the property, paying the taxes, and then have the heirs show up and have you or your renter thrown off for tresspassing with the line "Thank you for paying the taxes on our property, Sucker."
If the property is not very valuable, you probably will not want to spend too much time on this project. You could spend your time to more productive ends.
Good Investing******Ron Starr***********