subject: How To Make Money Locating Unclaimed Funds From Tax Sales [print this page] If you're going to make the move into the "found money" business, making money locating unclaimed funds from tax sales is probably going to be the meat and potatoes of your business. Other unclaimed funds hold some opportunity, but because they are for smaller amounts, in general, they don't offer the same profit potential as tax sale, and other real estate created overages.
If you want to make money locating unclaimed funds from tax sales, the first thing to do is to get trained. You can do all the research yourself, or there are training classes available online that condense some of the tedious work, like studying state code, into a more palatable format for you to study. Either way, you've got to learn how to perform the job legally before you attempt to go out an collect money.
Once you're sure you understand what the legal implications are, you'll need to find records of the overages. These are generally public record and available from your local government agency. You'll need to find out how much is owed, and who it's owed to. Then you can move on to finding the owners.
This is where you earn your money. These owners can be long gone - which is why the funds are sitting unclaimed in the first place. You can try to find them online, send letters to their last known address, locate family members, or pay someone who finds people professionally to find them for you.
Next, you have to get in touch with these owners. Once you learn the ins and outs of the business, finding and talking to owners will get easier. You'll need to convince them that you are not a scammer, and get them to agree to allow you to work on their behalf to get the funds released, while keeping your sources secret.
Once you've accomplished the above steps, you will process their claim for them with the government agency holding their funds. When the funds are released, you will pay yourself first, and then forward the rest of the funds to the owners.
All of this can be daunting for a beginner, but that is why these money finders are paid so handsomely. On funds that run into the tens of thousands of dollars, a typical finder's fee is 30-50%. And because these funds are being created so frequently with the current foreclosure rate, there are billions of dollars of funds waiting to be collected.
