subject: How To Collect Finder's Fees From Tax Sales [print this page] If you've ever been to a tax sale, you probably noticed a very common occurrence: properties being bid way, way up past the amount of taxes that were owed. Did you ever stop to wonder what happens to that extra money? Here's how to collect finder's fees from tax sales.
In some cases, the government automatically gets to keep the excess money.. The owner loses all his or her equity - all for a much smaller amount owed in taxes. In the rest of the states, the government holds that extra money for the owner to be able to collect - but only for a short period of time, in most cases. If the owner doesn't come to get the money, the government gets to keep it.
Sadly, many owners don't realize they get the money, and move on, leaving it behind to - you guessed it - be lost forever to the government. This is where you'll be able to collect finder's fees from tax sales - and help out the owners in the process.
It's a fairly simple process to collect finder's fees from tax sales. Find the records of the overbids that haven't been collected by their owners, locate the owners, and charge a finder's fee for your information. But of course, it's a little trickier than that. How do you get these owners to pay you for your information (and not just go around you and collect the money themselves)?
You have to keep your information secret. To ensure you get paid, you have to get the owners under contract before they know the source of the funds, and they must sign documents allowing you to act on their behalf, as an agent, with the agency holding their funds. Once you've got this in place, you can then accept the check on their behalf, pay yourself, and forward the rest of the money on to them.
