STEP 4 – DOWNLOAD/OBTAIN THE PROPERTY INFORMATION REPORT TO SEE IF THERE ARE ANY LIENS OF MORTGAGES THAT COULD TAKE THE SURPLUS.
Don’t get excited when you see a surplus record with $150,000 in surplus because there just might be a $300,000 mortgage on the property that MAY** take the surplus
You must find out if there are liens on the property and then decide your best course of action.
The counties are required to have a Property Information Report created for each tax deed being auctioned. This is so they know who to notify about the auction happening. They must notify everyone and every business that may have an interest in what is happening.
The Property Information Report will mention any liens by telling you the Book and Page Number or Instrument Number of that lien. Then you take those numbers and look them up on the county’s Official Record website to see what type of lien and how much it is. This is very important to do because you could have a surplus record of $30,000 and just one “lot mowing lien” for $50… that would make the record still very much worth pursuing.
On FloridaOverbids.com, there is a video on each of the county pages, showing you how to obtain the Property Information Reports.
On TaxAuctionSurplus.com and SurplusDatabase.com, WE obtain all of the property Information Reports for you (only for records where the surplus is over $5,000). We have an Online Repository that you can access at any time and download the Report you need.
We also have a guide showing you how to research the reports and what to look for as well as a Lien Research Guide and video.
**We say MAY take the surplus because all lienholders (except the IRS) have a deadline to put in a claim. If they miss the deadline (which happens very frequently), they forever lose the ability to claim that surplus and all of the money is due to the property owner.