You’ve held onto those precious tax certificates for two years and its time to go apply for custody of the tax deed and take control of the property. Where do you start?

Some readers may already know that the 60-day notice procedure (notice of application for tax deed) is the process certificate holders go through when they are trying to get the deed to a property in a certificate state. It’s just a way of saying, ‘Hey, if you don’t pay up soon I’m going to take your property as payment.”

Now, when you go to a tax auction in a certificate state you bid on the certificate to that property. Some investors don’t like going to certificate state auctions, because many states have a required period of time that the certificate holder must wait before initiating the 60-day notice procedure, usually about two years. This is to give the property holder plenty of time to get down to the county courthouse and catch up their back taxes so they don’t lose their property. Certificates can work well for the average investor because a lot of property owners just give up on the idea of paying back all their taxes after that long an amount of time and have all ready moved on. You’ll also get a fair number of property owners that have just forgotten about the back taxes and when they were due so it kind of works in your favor.

You do have to attempt to notify the property owners at the end of the two-year period that you will be taking their deeds. This is what the 60-day period is for.

Rules of the Game:

When doing research in preparation for the 60-day period you can always find the rules of the tax auction game in the State Statute books. Each and every county has a free public law library. Call information and find out where the law library is for your county or go online and search it. Once you get to the local library its easy to have the librarian show you where to go to find the statutes on tax auctions. Just ask the librarian, “Where do I find out what happens when people don’t pay their real estate taxes?”

Most of the time you’ll find the statutes are easy to understand. They are almost like a step-by-step set of instructions telling you what to do for that state’s tax auctions. And if you find that you don’t quite understand the statutes just have the librarian explain it to you.

These state statutes should have all the basic information you need to properly go about giving notice during the 60-day period.

Hint: If you are nice to the clerks in the courthouse, it’s likely they’ll be nice and helpful to you too, so don’t burn any bridges. Just ask the clerk to give you all the paperwork you’ll need to file for the 60-days notice. Remember to say please and thank you and you are well on your well to success.