Your first step to building a profitable tax lien or tax deed portfolio was deciding why you want to invest. This will determine how you are going to invest. Will you invest through a self-directed IRA or with after tax funds; in your own name or through an entity; in tax liens, tax deeds, or redeemable tax deeds? Once you determine how you are going invest, the next step is to decide where you will invest. What state and county are you going to invest in?

Once your done with steps one and two, the why and the how, it's time to concentrate on the what. The third step to building your profitable tax lien portfolio is finding the tax sale information. You need to find out when and where the tax sale is held and obtain a list of properties that are in the sale. For most areas this step will be easy, you just need to know where to go and who to contact to get this information. Sometimes you will have to pay for it and sometimes you will be able to get it free of charge.

Each state is a little different in regard to how the tax sales are conducted and who is responsible for them. In some states you'll have to contact the county tax collector, in others it could be the county treasurer, or the county sheriff, or there could be a separate county office just for this purpose. I recommend that you first contact the county tax collector, or whoever is responsible for the tax sale and ask for the tax sale information. Ask for a list of tax sale properties. Usually you can get this list for free and sometimes it may eve be available online.

All tax sale lists are not created equal. Some lists will have all the information that you need to do your due diligence (the next step in the process of building your profitable tax lien portfolio) and some will only list the tax number, block and lot, owner of record, and amount due for each property in the sale. The physical address of the property may not be included. If that is the case, you have two choices, you can buy a detailed tax sale list that includes all of the information that you need, or you can look the information up yourself, which can be a very tedious process.

Very large detailed tax sale lists can be quite expensive, even a few hundred dollars, so if there are a lot of properties in the tax sale you would be better off to limit the amount of properties that you are interested in and look up the information that you need yourself. You can limit yourself to a particular area, or to only certain types of properties to make the next step in the process a little easier. If the list is not that large and costly, you may want to buy the tax sale list from a tax sale list provider. It will save you lots of time in doing your due diligence.