ever wonder if it's really possible to break free from Financial worry and Achieve true Financial Freedom I get asked that a lot I'm Ted Thomas and I went from Flying high in the skies as an airline pilot to navigating the vast opportunities of tax defaulted properties it's a journey that transform my financial destiny and it started with one simple Revelation picture this you're not just making ends meet but thriving using strategies I've mastered over decades imagine the sense of security and excitement as you see your Investments grow substantially all because you knew where to look and what to do so if you're curious about how to turn this Vision into reality you're in the right place today I'm going to share exactly how you can start on this [Music] path welcome to the wealth without risk destination your guide to navigating the lucrative world of tax lean investment hi Ted how did you get into this area of real EST State investment okay I'll make that story rather short but it was very simple uh my first career was as an airline pilot so I FW for the Airlines and then when I finished flying for the airlines I got involved in defaulted real estate Pro foreclosure stpoint in other words the banks were having trouble with people not making payments so I actually devised a system where I could write letters to people and say look you're in foreclosure I'd love to buy your house had a little money to do that then I would buy the house and then I would resell it and and then as part of that business I started learning about other parts of defaulted real estate which is massive across the United States and the other part I learned about was tax defaulted property and when I found out about that I can assure you when I found out they were selling properties for 10 and 20 cents of the dollar or you could go buy tax leans and earn 17 and 20 and 30 cents of the dollar I said wow this is a all different business so I never look back I actually got out of the Foreclosure business I actually trademarked the name Mr foreclosure and wrote books on it in the 80s and I sold those books Nationwide and worldwide on how to do foreclosures and do it with Direct Mail of all things so short story hi Ted what is a tax lean certificate can you explain all right so first of all a tax lead toate is nothing more than the government has gone through a process where uh the legislature of the state and all states has said everybody that owns property must pay the tax all right if they don't pay the tax the local government the enforcement arm of the legislature is always the Board of Supervisors or the county commissioner the County Commissioners will tell the treasury well look that guy hasn't pay tax so the county commissioner will then send a a default notice to say look if you haven't paid your tax you have to pay your tax so that's called a notice of default to that property off so they put a lean on the property now if the people don't pay the lean the government has a choice they can either issue a tax lead certificate which is just a piece of paper or they could actually confiscate the property so across the United States half of the counties in the United States they will be very benevolent and they'll sell a tax lead certificate now why did I say benevolent because a person that's in the property doesn't get kicked off the property but the person that buys the certificate can make a huge generous return hello Ted how do I get my returns the so what they do is the county will make a giant list well I could find one here on my desk I'll find them okay so here's here's a giant list so this is this is Tampa Florida okay now I'm going to show you Tampa Florida but in the newspaper there's thousands I mean really thousand there' be like 30,000 tax that div gets available so you can pick one and say I want to buy that one and then you could pay someone else's taxes and they would give you a certificate and then you would have a certificate proving paid my taxes and that certificate could pay in Ohio it could pay up to 18% in Florida it's 18% in Arizona is 16% so anybody can buy those certificates and they'll be just in Florida there'll be 1 million certificates available every year what are the risks is it really that safe okay uh I like to say it's a safest investment in America today so let me tell you both sides because there's two sides to it okay the safe part is you can't just invest the money anywhere what you do with the money is you invest it directly with the county so that makes it means is predicted by the property tax code so you want to make sure you don't lose your money all right so you invested with the county when the people come in and pay their tax 95 97% PID they come in and pay the county will call you on the phone they'll say send the certificate in and we'll give you all your money back plus whatever the rate was now I said send the certificant in they don't even do that anymore they just send you on your cell phone and say we just deposited the money in your account it's that fast okay so that's a safe part now here's the unsafe people buy tax certificates and they don't go look and see what it is so if you Che out the newspaper cuz they're always in the newspaper you took out the newspaper said I want that one and you didn't look at it I don't know what you bought you don't know what you bought what if you bought in a bad neighborhood and the people never pay their checks what are you going to do now by the way if you're finding this video helpful why not give it a like feel free to drop a comment with your thoughts or questions below and if you haven't already hit that subscribe button and Bell icon it means you won't miss out on more insights like these it's a simple way to keep the conversation going and join our community on this journey now back to our video if I don't live in a state how do I check out the property to make sure it's okay we're in the the new age now the new age is everything can be done on the internet so someone could live in Portland Oregon and buy in Florida for example the State of Florida in the month of May will sell 1 million certificates so you could call the newspaper to get a list you call the newspaper like in uh Champa Florida Hillsboro County and they would send you like the newspaper I I was holding up in front of my face okay and that has a list of all the tax there if you didn't want to call the newspaper you could just look on the website and you'd see all the significance which state offers the highest interest rates is any one of them considered the best uh the best state is whichever one you pick you can because you can do anywh you want but I would say if I going to judge the best state why don't just try to do it in the state you live in because you don't have to go anywhere all right and you don't have to buy in a neighborhood or a place that you don't know but you can do it all online today so you can do it any state that you want and depending upon the the rate of return you're looking for it so uh in Florida the maximum return is 18% the maximum in Arizona is 16% all right so I would always say my advice would just do what's close to you and then you need to know the rules they definitely have to know the rules of those auctions if you don't know uh when you buy a tax Lane certificate it's at a bid Down Auction not a bid up auction when the bid comes out it's starting bid and part of 18% the next bid is 1772 177 16 1/2 lowest bidder against the tax certificate lowest bid okay now the reason it's the lowest bidder is the state and the county are trying to protect the homeowner so the homeowner pays less and less tax as people bid it down so the tax always stays the same less and less interest all the way down hey Ted what if they don't pay off their taxes can I lose all my money then if they never pay their taxes very little uh times where you're going to lose money now you could lose money if you did something you bought a property that's worthless because you didn't go look at it you just that was worthless so you bought a worthless property the people aren't going to pay the tax you will have paid the county but nobody's going to pay it back so you're going to get that worthless property well you don't want a worthless property that would be crazy all right so you always should look at what you're going to buy so so that's important the rate of return is determined by the state so every state and every County can have their own rules so let me give you an example of that so the state of Maryland they'll have a county called Prince George's County but right next door is aund County you say well who cares well a Rundell County only pays 12% on the tax certificate and Prince georgees pays 24% so you don't want to buy a Rundle County of 12% when you can bu right next door at 24% so that the point is you want to do a little homework you don't want to just wing it you want to do a little homewor I mean that's why years ago I used to take two or 300 people at a time to these auctions because 30 years ago when I started people didn't even know there was such a thing they didn't believe it they would go with me and they would just sit there and their mouths would open how could this happen partici everything would talk was well over 200 years old hey Ted how do I find out if my tax lean certificate was redeemed and how do I get paid okay so quick review what you did is you raised your hand you bought a piece of paper you now have the piece of paper that's a taxing certificate all right when the individual who defaulted pays their tax they're not going to pay it to you they're going to pay it directly to the county that's what we like they pay directly to the government then the government will dial up the phone and call you and say look you have a certificate send it to us and we're going to send you a check for whatever you invested plus the interest on all that so we know you like that but in the real world it's speed it up now what happens the guy pays the bill the county will send you a text and say we just put that money in your account that's how it's done you got oh look at this I of money today all so people go to the auction some people buy 10 or 20 certificates and then every time one pays out whoa I got a check today look at that you know people love it hi Ted what is the Redemption period or how long do I have to wait to get paid okay well that's where you need to do some studying the reason you have to study is each state each County can have their own rules okay so one County might say you have to redeem this certificate in other words they have to commit a pay within 2 years another one might say it's three years and that'll always be on the County website before you buy they'll have rules and give you all that information so none of it's hidden but usually generally between two and 3 years except in redeemable D States we'll cover that in another video hello Ted what should you do before you buy and after you buy a tax lean certificate number one you look up what state you want to be involved in number two you go to the county now when you get to the county then you're going to look up tax lead certificate you don't want to look up just one you want to look up numerous because someone else might might buy the other one all right so look up numerous certificates now you don't want to buy a certificate unless someone has seen it so you want to have someone check it up so that's due diligence you're checking to make sure the property is okay now of course if you're reading about this you're reading it on the County website so none of it's hidden you'll want to find out when you when they pay when you pay for the certificate when are you going to get paid back that's usually in two or three years all of that information is always on the County website and it's always in any auction list you would buy hello Ted how do I find these tax defaulted properties up for auction okay um the average person doesn't know that either because they don't realize there's 3,000 counties Plus in the United States so you need to know the county name so the best way to do that is we have directories of that kind of thing to to tell them where all the different count but once you know the county then you can go to the county pick that County and then the county on their website or in the local newspaper they will make a list of all the certificates that are available so let's say you went to Miami if you went to Miami I don't have one here on my desk but this is this is a newspaper that I'm holding my hand there would be a newspaper that thick of 65,000 certificates that are available this year 65,000 just because it's a large population County Millions whereas you went to a rural County in South Dakota there's only going to be a couple of hello Ted how should I select the property that I want maybe out of hundreds of thousands okay well we actually have lots of classes on that and anybody that's a client of our they get we give free classes uh um but the first thing you would want to do is get the list second thing you want to do is you want to locate the prop on the list now if it's located in in a bad neighborhood or something like that well you don't want to do that cuz if the people don't pay with a tax certificate you see the beauty of a tax the reason it's so safe is you invested with the government most people will pay that you're going to get your money back from the government that's a good investment right but what if you invested with the government and you bought a property that the people aren't going to come in and pay for they're going to abandon it all right well then you're going to lose your money all right so you want you you always want to check the property all right now one once you check the property you know where it is so I would say always do a country club property cuz if you didn't get paid you'd get a country club property that make sense I would say go to the country club find someone that that didn't pay their taxes right pay the taxes because if if they don't pay you're going to get the property how's that I don't make the rules that's the rule so I tell people buy the best one you can buy because if you don't get paid on the certificate you're going to get the property you get it all right so with that said you you don't want to you don't want to go buy Cheapo property you want to buy the best property you can buy when you're buy tax lead to do it what if I didn't really want the property if the tax lean certificate is not redeemed do I have to take it anyway no you don't have to you could just let it sit there until it goes back to tax auction again you don't have to take it I would I would buy the best property I could buy that's what I would tell people buy the best one I could bu paay for the certificate and then for the people to come in and pay now remember 95 97% of these people are going to come in and pay it's not very often you're going to get a property now this whole strategies that people work to get the property but that's not our conversation today uh tax lead certificates in my estimation of the safest investment in America today if you know what you're doing but you know that's the same thing you wouldn't go drink money water right you want to drink clean water so you need to you need to put some effort you know you know cognitive effort to figure out what you're going to buy don't just buy anything and I mean prayer is not a very good business strategy you really want to think about this confuses a lot of beginners so what's the difference I can assure you they are confused I have people that are clients of mine for 5 years and it's still confused all right so visualize a picture of the whole United States United States is divided up into all kinds of little counties more than 3,000 of them in every County the way the county pays the bills is they collect property tax so you live in a house so you pay a property tax and you pay it to your county then what your county does with that money is they pay the police they pay the firefighters they pay the County Employees they pay the school teachers they pay to fix the roads all that money comes from property tax all right so every county has to charge property tax they don't have any choice all right now if someone doesn't pay the property tax then the rule is that the treasurer will send them a notice and say a default notice and say you must pay property tax if you don't the county will take your property you're going to forfeit your property to the county now the county then is going to sell the property County doesn't want the property they got all the property you want they got the parks they got the schools they got the county buildings they don't want your property all right so they're going to sell it and that's called a tax defaulted property auction tax defaulted property auction and they're going to sell that property with a starting bid of just the back taxes they don't care if there's a mortgage they don't care if there's a DEA trust they're going to wipe that off the property and they're going to sell the property starting bid 10 or 20 cents on the dollar so when you win the bid at a tax lean certificate auction you don't get the property you're just getting a piece of paper the bidding down and just on the piece of paper a tax let's see when you buy a tax certificate you have no rights to that property you can't go bother the homeowner you don't have any right to go on the property you don't have any right to charge taxes or rent or anything else when you buy a tax certificate it's a pass investment the reason people want tax there because is they go to the auction they raise your hand like I'm doing now they want to buy an interest rate they're trying to get a high interest rate if the banks are paying 2 4 6% they want to go to an auction and make 12 or 14 or 18% they're trying to make an interest rate they're not going to get the property the only time you're going to get the property is if you go to a tax defaulted Property Auction one is a certificate tax lead certificate the other is the property you you'll always mix it up every everybody does everybody does that that's that's that's one of the challenges people don't don't understand what they're buying and if you don't understand what you're buying let's face it you wouldn't you wouldn't marry your new partner if you hadn't seen it whether you're male or female you're not getting married unless it's him so you need to see the property you need to know what you're getting if I invest in a property too far from me who should I contact to go look at the property for me and report back well first of all I'd find the property and I find it online that once I found it online there's numerous people you could have look at a property first of all you could hire a real estate broker and someone that's knowledgeable or an appraiser and say I'll pay you to go out and and take picture cuz everybody has a camera now so you could go take pictures with their phone send you the pictures to make sure you knew that the property was there sometime the probably is a picture on the internet but what if it burned down or what if there was you know sometime they have bad storms in Arkansas or Oklahoma who a big uh tornado goes through and takes there's no house there so it's just a lot so you always want to take a picture of what you want so you could hire an appraiser you could hire a pargal if worst case an iron an Uber driver and say drive out to this address show me that it's the right address take a picture and know what's there but I wouldn't buy anything without looking at it that's for sure do you need a lawyer to do this oh no no no no now that that's a good question because you this was made for the public this is what for the average guy when this system was invented people couldn't read and write this has been around for 200 years over probably 250 years that there's always been tax defaulted on property cuz some sometime people go through a hard time what if the breadwood or the family had passed away where they had a whole bunch of kids and they had to go on welfare they couldn't pay the property tax so they had to lose lose the property whether whether it was a little farm or whether it was a house or whatever it might be whether it was an apartment it could it could be anything and so you know bad luck happens because life has storms I mean it doesn't it it isn't perfect every day doesn't mean you can't recover but the point is uh they're going to have tax auctions forever there's there's there's 5,000 tax auctions every year this has been going on for decades what kind of money do you need to start investing in tax lean certificates well I could tell you you could buy a tax certificate for $50 but if you buy a tax certificate for $50 and it earns 18% I mean what do you what have you made I mean you have so I tell people when you get5 or $10,000 you ought to start thinking about it but people always want to know well can I get in for 500 bucks yeah you can but what do you going to get for 500 bucks you know it's a little lot somewhere that you know maybe you can put a sign on it I mean it's it's not not something you ought to buy I mean if if you're an investor you'd want to buy something that you knew it was going to appreciate in value or or if it wasn't going to appreciate in value it was going to pay you a return you're looking for Roi which is return on investment so this is really an alternative investment it's not um there's a lot of people that that um watch my videos on YouTube and they say wow this is a getrich quick because people that learn it and have done it for a number of years I have people to make $100,000 every year buying property at the right price and maybe they modify it fix it up or do whatever so what if you could buy a big 4,000 ft house and you tidied it up and fixed it up and spent money on it put a new roof and put Nice Landscaping and you sold it you might make 100,000 so it's not that unusual now we're talking at a very basic level today but this encompasses everything I mean I have clients that a subdivision when you probably live in a subdivision where this hous is being built all of a sudden we go through a bad economy which we're starting to right now and when that happens they shut off the money everybody hears the news the Federal Reserve raise the interest rate well then suddenly all the all the builders and all the Carpenters are out of work what are do with those houses that just left there half built the lots are left there well I have people that just go out and buy those and then wait 3 years till the market comes back because they're an investor and they might make a couple hundred, so this is not a business for amateurs you can start as an amateur but as long as youve followed some guidance and some training you'll be okay this is a big money business long term I mean I buy houses that spend 150 160,000 is what I invest but I'm hoping that I'm going to be able to sell it for $300 or $400,000 does the economy affect how to invest in tax lean certificates yeah and there's a lot of ways okay first of all um if if anybody's been an adult they know the economy goes through UPS UPS Downs so it's going up then it goes down so youall put it close well these properties we're buying in the truth because someone's already lost the property to the tax collector the tax collector doesn't want the property so they sell it at a low price with no trust deed and no mortgage so now wait a minute I got a I've got a big Advantage cuz I'm buying no mortgage no deed of trust and I'm dying down here at low price well I don't have to hold out to get top price be nice to do that but what if I buy it here that I sell it here to a fix upper guy or people want to renovate it or people that are flippers wow I could sell it to any of those vi or I could sell it to a handyman guy and he goes he puts a new roof on this year next year he builds a garage next year I sudden he sells it for that it's a profit business but that's General business going on all the time but we're always buying in that Troth cuz the Troth is continuous it's always there there's a new crop of tag defaulted property every year at 5,000 auctions do you offer classes that help strategize based on different scenarios no business is going to be easy okay I didn't say it wasn't simple no business going to be it's always going to require the work so the people that put in the work in this thing takes them a little while to learn it will you give them classes I have classes that go like all day on Saturday you could do that I have classes that they can come and spend weekends with I have classes they can study online we have every conceivable kind of class they want but they're going to have to put some time in the people that get in trouble are the on that just get the little bit of YouTube video that we're giving them now you got to get a little bit more depth I think there's 600 different things that we've talked about on YouTube I haven't even touched it I've been doing this for 30 years what's the first thing a beginner should do and what can you offer as a Next Step large population counties are going to have hundreds even thousands of tax defaulted property or tax lead certificat the small counties meaning small population they're just going to have dozens or hundreds what I suggest is uh you can find out about both of those right below me if you want to learn about that find out where the tax leads are where the tax deeds are and how many I'm Ted Thomas I'll see you in the next [Music] video