Foreclosures as Low as $10,000
Tax Lien specialist

With the motivation of quick property flipping largely behind us, second-home buyers nowadays are more geared to enjoying their property rather than looking for a quick return on investment. Familiar with your desired location amenities, such as weather and traffic patterns, proximity to a major metropolitan area...

How to buy a second home

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If you have been toying with the idea of buying a second home, now could be a good time to take the leap. Interest rates are still low, and home prices are rising but within reach.

Ready to buy a vacation home? Check out the lowest mortgage rates.

Scouting the market

One way to start the search for a second home is to find a real estate agent who is familiar with your desired location. This partner could fill you in on aspects such as weather and traffic patterns, help you evaluate the location and amenities of a property and provide information about comparable sales.

And, with an eye to the long-term value of the property, the agent could fill you in on historical prices and how comparable sales have fared, as well as resale prospects. Factors that tend to have a positive impact are proximity to a major metropolitan area, ease of access and availability of four-season amenities. If you've already decided on a location, start searching for a mortgage that fits your needs.

Gauging your return

With the motivation of quick property flipping largely behind us, second-home buyers nowadays are more geared to enjoying their property rather than looking for a quick return on investment.

Still, you should consider that you will be away from the property much of the time and factor in additional maintenance costs, such as having a management company check for water leaks or frozen pipes.

Getting insurance for a second home may be more challenging than for a primary residence, depending on location. Typically, your second home is located farther away, and insurance companies might be concerned the home will not be properly maintained.

If you are considering a second home on the beach, factor in the cost of flood insurance in addition to your home insurance. It has become more difficult to get flood insurance in coastal communities, and the cost has grown exponentially in some markets.

Mortgage requirements

As for obtaining mortgage financing, lenders look for the same factors as they do for a mortgage on a primary residence. The difference is that you have to qualify for a second-home mortgage in addition to any mortgage debt on your primary home.

Typically, you will need to come up with a down payment of at least 10 percent of 20 percent, meet credit standards and debt-to-income requirements, and provide documents for income and asset verification. If you have a good relationship with the mortgage lender on your primary residence, that might be a good place to start your quest for a second-home mortgage. or income-property; 

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tax liens online through the Florida online tax lien purchasing website as an example of how easy it is to do.

The transcript is as follows:

1. Ted Introduction: "Technology has made buying tax liens online a much simpler process than when I began teaching and guiding others how to buy tax liens over 25 years ago, most government agencies selling tax liens have significant resources online to help investors research liens and the property which may have the back taxes owed.

Couple that with the numerous private websites, where an informed investor can go to research the properties involved in the online auction, and many investors do all their property research online from anywhere in the world, before buying at an online tax lien auction.

The process is straight forward as is demonstrated by Keri Goff in this video of buying tax liens online at an actual live auction. As with all investments poorly selected investments can lose money, so it is important to understand investing in tax liens before investing your money. More information is available

2. Online buying demonstration from IBGS class 16: Registering and bidding on tax lien certificates (Keri Goff) So what we are going to do today is we are going to go through the Brevard County Florida online taxing certificate purchasing process.

We are going to start at the Brevard County tax collection site, BrevardTaxSale.com, and we’re going to click here where it says “start here” and we’re just going to review the rules real quick. First thing I’d like to know is how do I pay for my deposit and liens purchase. So I’m going to click on that. 

All this information here tells us we’re going to have to do a fund transfer at the time of registration and put on a deposit before we can bid on any of the items.

I’m also going to check here on bidding rules. And this will tell us everything we need to know about the auction rules and it’s definitely important to make sure we know all these rules before we begin. Let me go back to home and we’re going to begin by registering. 

We are going to register as EIAN, and we’re just going to fill in this information. Now we’re going to fill in our contact information. We are buying this within a corporation, and therefore everything will be done with our primary name on the winning certificate as our company name.

This could be anything from a corporation to an LLC.

Foreclosures as Low as $10,000
Tax Lien specialist