Tony Martinez
speaker
87 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Tony Martinez’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
We have a saying here at USTLA, it's called price solves all issues. If we can get them at the right price, we can solve just about anything that would pop up. Now, again, we can't overstate that. We can't not do research. We know going in, we're going to walk through the property and I'm going to have a rehab estimate before we make the acquisition.
So I'm going to know going in a really, really good idea. When that price quote comes back, I'm going to know my numbers. The vast majority of our properties that we acquire right now, the total purchase price when we buy directly that way, they range from about $4,000 to about $20,000. That's total purchase price. Yeah, that's insane.
I've been doing it for a long time. More and more people are starting to find out about it. There's other guys out there teaching people information about investing in tax liens. I find it to be not a whole lot of credible information. I mean, actual people who there's people teaching and there's people like myself, we teach, right?
We show people exactly how to invest in tax foreclosed real estate. And we actually do it. I've completed over 2,500 tax deed property acquisitions since 1992 until now. And the difference for us is we have the irrefutable public record documentation to prove it. I mean, we have every single deed that's been recorded with our names on it. And that's from my own portfolio.
That's not investing other people's money for them. And so that's a big part of it that I think is really important in today's marketplace with so many, you know, I don't know how to say it gently, but just fake gurus in the marketplace. Sure.
Oh, that's a great question, man. There's so many differences. Let's start there. There's tax sales that a lot of people go to. And right now, in my experience, the tax sales are so competitive. As you know, it's a tough market out there for real estate for a lot of people right now to find kind of distressed real estate, if you will.
So people hear the word tax sale and they naturally assume like I can get a bargain. And you just have so many people showing up to these tax sales that just, they don't know what they're doing. And they're literally bidding these properties up to values that just don't make sense.
So we've developed strategies over these 32 years where we're acquiring properties without having to go to a tax sale. There's multiple strategies in different markets where we're actually buying properties, tax defaulted properties, directly from the county and not having to compete at an auction.
So there's a very, very big difference between any other type of real estate investing, including bank foreclosures, than the strategies that we employ here at USTLA. And I'll just give you the name of what, and the name of one is called over-the-counter tax deed property acquisitions is one of our number one strategies that we teach and that we employ ourselves.
This is a strategy where counties just have massive, massive excess inventories, properties that went to a tax sale at one time and didn't sell, and they just build up these massive inventories, and they reach the point where they're just liquidating properties. Now, if there's a flying ointment, it's this. There's too many properties on the list.
For example, a property we just acquired, the list had 7,000 properties on it. Now, the challenge with the plus is there's 7,000 properties. The minus is there's 7,000 properties you have to try to figure out how to do the research on to find the great properties. And that's where our expertise comes in. So that difference is massive compared, you know, everyone else.
People talk about off-market properties. Every property we acquire is off-market. They never hit the MLS. Right. They never show up. Once they're on the OTC list, they never show up to an auction ever again. How did the property get to that list again?
In the markets where I would say the highest level experts in, it'll start off as what's called a tax lien certificate, which means the person didn't pay their property taxes. It comes up for what's called a tax lien certificate sale. And at that sale, what's happening is they're not selling the property yet. They're just selling the back taxes. They're selling the debt.
So people like you and I can come down to the tax lead certificate sale and put up the money in essence, what you're doing. is you're paying someone else's back taxes for them. In return, you receive what's called the tax lien certificate, and that taxing certificate pays interest rate.
The difference here is in a lot of states that have very low interest rates and long redemption periods, thousands and thousands of those taxing certificates don't get purchased at the auction. Those taxing certificates go back into the county's inventory and they sit there, right?
While the redemption period, that grace period that the property owner has to come in after property taxes, for example, could be, most of them are right around three years. Every day that they sit at the county's inventory, the redemption period for that taxing certificate is expiring.
So what ends up happening is when the redemption period expires, all those taxing certificates are still sitting in the county's inventories, not generating any revenue. So what'll happen is either the county will foreclose on the property themselves, or they'll sell them off to another entity, either a county entity or a state entity, which converts it from a taxing certificate to a deed.
And then what we're doing is we're stepping in and just buying the deeds directly.
You're going to be targeting lists at different counties. And again, it's not an easy, quick explanation on targeting markets and lists and finding the list, but just in general, what a person would be looking for, the easiest way is
is if you're speaking to a county or a county official is just finding out like, what do you do with all the properties and all the tax and certificates that don't get purchased at auction? That's really the big question that needs to be asked. And it takes a lot of research to do that. The difference for us is we've spent, I actually made my first tax and certificate investments in November,
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