Welcome

I'm excited: I just received my first check from investing in tax liens: $1,677.76. Of course, I purchased the lien for $1,662.97, so my profit is only $14.79, a return of 0.88%. The good news is that this return was in one month, so annualized, my return is about 10.67%. Not bad at all, but still short of what I thought was my conservative goal of 12% per year based on my naive expectations before I got into the game. I am happy that I did not lose my shirt on my first tax lien transaction as that was a concern I had. I still have a lot to learn about tax liens.

Welcome to my blog. In case you have not guessed yet, the subject of this blog will be investing in tax liens. I will be learning more about the world of tax lien investing through learning resources and through real world experience, and I will share that knowledge here. Instead of giving a disclaimer about not being a professional, I'll take it a step farther and admit to being an almost total novice in the field. Feel free to doubt my claims and laugh at my mistakes, but also feel free to educate and encourage me and any other readers I might pick up along the way.

I first heard about tax liens about twenty years ago, but I never followed up on the topic until earlier this year. In February of this year, I borrowed the old version (1994) of Joel Moskowitz book The 16% Solution from the library. It seemed like investing in tax liens was a no risk / nice reward endeavor. Of course that immediately made me suspicious. Some haphazard Google searches made me even more suspicious, but I decided to jump in anyway. My plan was to “specialize” in Florida tax liens for reasons I will discuss in a later post. I figured I would just browse the Arizona online auctions to get a feel of how things work. In March of 2012, I purchased four tax liens in an online auction for Mohave County, AZ. In April, one of those tax liens was redeemed for the paltry (or princely, depending on your perspective) figures listed above. I am now a tax lien investor.

In future posts, I plan to discuss my 2012 Arizona tax lien adventures and my future endeavors (Florida tax lien auctions happen in May). I will discuss lessons learned, research done, observations and plans. I also plan to learn more about the subject of tax liens and discuss the sources of information I find. I plan to track my failures and successes right here online as well as provide links to more information sources.

This is my first blog, so I will be learning that whole world as well. I do not plan to use much post space on blogging topics, just keep in mind that for a while I will have no set format/layout. I hope to get this site looking more professional soon. I am not sure how often I will be posting, but I plan to have a minimum of one post a month. I definitely want to invite comments, but I still need to find out how to manage that part of blogging. I do want to monetize this site (my goal is to earn one penny a month which I will add to my growing tax lien bankroll), but I hope to keep it not too obnoxious.

Hopefully we will both enjoy this ride and come out the other end a little wealthier.