Urban legends grow out of the exaggerated narrative of a good story that at least contains some truth. Like most people, I had heard stories of incredible deals at a tax auction, but after my significant other turned in a VA loan due to bad credit history, we decided to investigate the possibilities of a city tax auction in Buffalo, NY. where many of his relatives live.
At that time, the spring of 2004, we had a few thousand dollars saved. We decided to try to pay cash for the house if we could, because it would be easier to clean up our credit and pay off old debts later. We searched the internet and found that the Buffalo NY annual revenue auction will be held on October 25 and 26. We visited Buffalo first. We know that it is a once flourishing city, whose population is half of what it was 50 years ago, with many empty houses.
The city’s website at http://www.ci.buffalo.ny.us is very accommodating, and the properties in the public auction are listed in both Microsoft Excel and Access form. Every time the City of Buffalo updated the Excel spreadsheet, which usually gets closer to the date of the tax auction, I went through it and identified the properties that met our initial search criteria. We want 1,200 to 2,000 square feet, two bathrooms, a garage, and an appraised value of $30,000 or less because we don’t want to go over $5,000. A week before the auction I had a list of about 150 properties to choose from, and printed information on each property from the city website.
Four days before the tax auction, at the stroke of midnight, from our apartment in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. We set out for a new home town. The next morning we arrived in Buffalo and rented a room at a cheap motel. I had my stack of papers to look at in possessions, and we drove around town, after buying a couple of things that I knew helped;
1. Disposable cameras: We got these from the one-hour photo service at Walgreen’s.
2. Green, yellow, and red booklets: green for the properties we were in the order of a certain student. It was yellow for the “maybe” pile. I ended up not using the Red Labels at all; I just threw away the papers on the properties that didn’t interest us.
He drove out, and I took the boards of the houses, and wrote down all that I could think of. He insisted, and I agreed, that it was a green-shining house, a square house built, with a roof in apparent good condition, and no trees. growing too close to home We have to tell you that we saw many really terrible houses, but after three days of sending pictures around we wanted to order a short list of about 15 houses. The night before the auction, the cameras dropped off at Walviridis, they picked up our one hour photos later, and he was talking at midnight about which house we thought it should be inhabited.
The next morning we took our places in a line of like-minded people outside the Buffalo Convention Center. Almost as soon as the auction began, a bid of $4,000 opened on our 15 new homes. It was a large and solid older house, but we had seen people emigrating from it the night before, and we did not order it because we did not want any trouble from the previous owners or tenants. As it turned out, no one at all ordered in that house. A few hours passed, which we passed three times, and 4:00 in the house we now live in became two days. We would have opened the command to $3,000, and we would have got it for that price if someone didn’t raise his hand and then say. he had made a mistake. It cost us a staggering $200, but it was still a fantastic deal!
We immediately paid the deposit requested by the city for $1,000, then to drive another aspect of the house. In all the excitement we weren’t quite sure which house we were going to buy! She was thrilled to see two apples in the backyard. We could not know whether anyone was still staying in the house or not. We met a few neighbors and then went to dinner to celebrate. The next day we went to City Hall and paid the rest of the purchase price.
Back in Maryland, we just received a letter from the city of Buffalo to confirm that we had bought the house. They also warned us in letters that we should wait about six weeks before doing anything like evicting the tenants, destroying things, or moving them, at which time they sent us another letter. Right on schedule, the second letter arrived, and we moved into our new home on December 13, 2004, during a heavy snowfall. The previous owner met us and welcomed us to the neighborhood. He lived across the street, and he didn’t want to live with us. My husband had bought it as a fixer-upper and was paying to have a new water and electric imported from there. street, but he became ill and abandoned the project.
So we had owned the house for almost a year. We installed new copper pipes throughout the house, fixed leak in the roof, attached to the interior walls; and they returned the bars in the front porch. The first two of these projects were done by local contractors, referred to by some of our good neighbors. Even now we still have a lot of work to do, but we are very happy here.
If the house wasn’t livable, when we arrived with our truck and a U-Haul trailer full of our possessions, we rented a house, many of which are in Buffalo, and decided what to do. Fortunately the house was hardly good enough for us to live there. The mayor of Buffalo expressed that rather than suffer Buffalo not to sell properties to people outside of Buffalo, and has instituted an Anti-Flipping Business Enforcement. discourage the practice of buying cheap properties at tax auctions and elsewhere, while simply selling them on eBay to dispose of ex-residents at inflated prices.
I recommend to you that everyone who wants to emulate our things, to take the time to drive around the city, and examine each thing as closely as possible. When it happened, we were thinking of entering two houses, but most of the time it would not be possible to enter one. Write everything down, no matter how small it may seem. Don’t trust your memory or tell yourself that you “know” a certain neighborhood.
Book anyone who wants to arrange financing on a property that I bought at auction, at least in Buffalo. A deposit of at least 20% must be paid in cash or cash at auction, with the balance to be paid within six weeks.
A tax lien is different from a levy foreclosure. When property tax is in the mortgage, the bank is notified, and more than happy to pay taxes. so as not to lose anything at all.
The good news is that when the city forecloses on the property, any and all prior liens, liens, or claims associated with it are canceled. No fee clause or title search is necessary in the possession of tax.
Goodbye everyone!
