Hi James,

As a tax lien investing specialist and trainer I think you are being slightly mislead. Some people make it sound like you can invest anywhere in the US online without coming here. That is simply not true. Only a few states have online tax sales and the 2 states you mentioned Georgia and Indiana do not have online tax sales. Indiana does have only 4 counties that just this year conducted online tax sales but for all the other counties in that state you have to show up in person to bid. Yes they are internet tax sales but you have to use their computers, you cannot bid from from your own computer. Also Georgia is a redeemable deed, which means that the price of the deed is bid up and there is more of a chance that you can foreclose on the property, in which case you will need someone to rehab, and manage the property for you.

Another misunderstanding that people have from these seminars is that they misinterpret the words "government guaranteed," that these gurus use so flippantly. It does not mean that you are guaranteed to get paid on a tax lien, no one guarantees that you will get paid. What is guaranteed is the interest rate. The only thing that guarantees that you will get paid is the property thus due diligence is very important. Quite frankly I would not trust aerial maps or comps from websites like Realtor.com or Zillow.com.

I am not familiar with HigginsNationalTaxSaleDirectory.com so I cannot comment on that, but most of these resources only provide the tax sale lists from the county and you have to pay for the enhanced lists, which are the lists that you need in order to do your due diligence on tax sale properties, and these lists can be quite expensive. I do not know if that is the case with this particular tool or if get a certain amount of enhanced lists for free each month.

Another thing that you may not have been made aware of is the competition for these liens. This is big business and when you are only bidding on residential single family homes as they suggest you are in competition with with big business as well as all of the other investor who want the same thing. In some of the online tax sales last year there were a few thousand bids on one property!

I do not want to discourage you from buying tax liens, I think it is a great way to invest your money at high return without the risk of the stock market. I just think that there are better ways for foreigners to do it without paying $5000 to learn how and without having to jump through all of hoops of setting up an LLC, getting a US bank acount, finding contacts in the US, etc. For my foreign subscribers and clients I suggest that they invest in a US tax lien investing fund or with a tax lien agent. It will cost them a lot less than $5000 and they will have experts doing the work for them. All they need is to have a US tax ID number and all the work is done for them.

By the way I don't think that luck is involved you just have to know what you're doing and Bid4Assets only does tax deed sales – not tax lien sales.