Marketplace Pro: General Overview – The Dashboard
Welcome to the Marketplace Pro software! This blog will serve as an introduction to understanding its functionality.
The first tab to note is the dashboard. This is pretty simple; it will include a list of all of the items you have uploaded into the marketplace.
The asset management tab will allow you to upload any tax lien certificates that you've purchased. Navigate to the top right corner and click the “load my assets” button. Anything you upload will then populate in this section in order for you to view and manage your certificates.
The auction calendar will show you a list of the states as well as their auction dates. You can click the drop-down menu next to any of the States on the list, and it will give you more information about the available counties.
The tax liens tab will also give you a list of the available tax liens that are auctioned off so that it's easier for you to perform your due diligence on these properties before actually participating in the auction. If you click this drop-down menu in the top right corner, it will give you a list of the different counties that are upcoming.
The deeds section or other assets tab will include a list of all the over-the-counter tax lien certificates available for you to purchase directly through the county website. You can also apply some search filters on the right-hand side of the page.
Lastly, the marketplace tab will include all of the inventory that we currently have available for purchase. This list will consist of various tax liens and tax deeds in specific locations that we've invested in.
Marketplace Pro: Asset Management Feature
Let's go over the asset management feature a little bit more. This is where you can upload your tax liens, as well as how to manage them once they've been uploaded.
When you purchase tax lien certificates from the county, they'll give you the option of exporting the liens you have bought into an excel file to save onto your PC, and then you can upload this file into the management tab.
Please take note of the tabs at the top in this section. The asset management feature requires these tabs to be included in order to upload the certificates. It can then monitor them and keep track of them over time.
The first thing you want to do is navigate to the “asset management” page. In the top right corner, you'll want to make sure that this says “need to load more certs,” Then, you'll click the “load my assets” button. You'll then select tax liens. After that, you can browse “my computer” from the excel file that you have exported from the county site. From there, select “test asset management,” click open, and then from here, you'll click “next.”
The tabs from your excel file will populate here. Now you need to click this drop-down menu and select the corresponding tab. Your certificate number would be in this drop-down menu. Certificate year would translate to “auction year”. You'll then continue down this list and select the corresponding tab from the drop-down menu until all of them are filled out. Once that's done, you will click next, and it will add them to your asset management page.
When you have uploaded the files they will populate, to give you a general overview of these liens. If you want to look at these liens further, you'll click this research button on the right-hand side of the page. And it will also give you a list of all the certificates you've uploaded into your asset management tab.
If you want to get more information about any of the properties or even get an image, you can hover over the parcel ID. It will give you a photo of the property.
If you want more information, click on the “parcel ID”, and it will give you details we've exported straight from the property appraiser page. We've also included links from the appraiser/assessor page here. In addition to the tax collector site, then Google maps and Google earth so you can get the imagery.
In order to remove the tax lien or even mark one of them as redeemed, you'll need to click the check box to the left-hand side. The “actions” button will pop up at the bottom of the screen. After that, select the corresponding action. If you haven't purchased a tax lien certificate, we recommend creating a test excel spreadsheet, so you can upload it here and become familiar with uploading liens into the database.
Marketplace Pro: Auction Calendars
The auction calendar is relatively simple. It is a list of states and their tax lien auctions to prepare yourself for the auction ahead of time. You can now click the drop-down menu on any of the States on this list to get more information about the counties offering tax lien sales.
For example, if you click the drop-down on Florida, we see Baker County. They have an online auction; the list of tax lien certificates available was May 6th, which is also when the bidding for those liens began. There were over 1100 certificates in that auction with a combined face value of $953,000, a combined assessed value of $58 million, and a combined market value of 70 million. The auction is scheduled to close on May 31st. If you want to download the list of tax lien certificates and export it into an excel file or .csv, you have the option of doing that in this section.
Some states have already had auctions happen this year. For example, Arizona's auctions take place in February and January. But they're all over towards the end of February. And the action column tells us that the auction is over. So we know that if we want to participate, we have to do so within these date ranges. On the far right of the menu is a calendar. You can click any of the greyed-out dates to get more information on what is scheduled to occur on that particular day.
Marketplace Pro: Tax Liens Tab
The tax liens tab provides you with a list of tax liens that will be available at an upcoming auction. This will allow you to perform your due diligence on these tax liens efficiently so that you can be prepared with your list of selected properties during the auction. It also allows you to research them in advance.
If there's a county with an upcoming auction, we will include that county on our drop-down menu up here. However, if that county hasn't released its list yet, there won't be any data available. So you want to be sure you're looking at a county that has already released its list of properties.
If you select Miami Dade for this example. We have the list of tax liens that are getting auctioned off. This one is selected by simply clicking on the parcel id. Now the face value of this certificate is $8,399. The assessed value is 306,000, and it looks like it's zoned as a multi-family property or a property with 10+ units.
If I want to get more information on this parcel, we've included links to the property appraisal or assessors page. This also includes the tax collector page, so that you can do more research on these properties beforehand.
If you want to select the property so that you can export it to an excel file, you'll click this checkmark on the left-hand side of the parcel id. You'll then click the generate auction upload button, and then you can choose the format you want it to export. Again, that makes it extremely helpful to perform your due diligence on these properties beforehand and go into that auction prepared with the list of properties that you liked.
We suggest narrowing down the counties you are interested in and beginning your due diligence on the liens in those specific locations as early as you can, so you can be prepared for the auction.
Marketplace Pro: Deeds Section Tab
The deeds section or other assets tab gives you a list of all tax liens certificates available for purchase over the counter. Over-the-counter tax liens certificates are liens that weren't sold at the original auction that the county still has available for sale. These liens can sometimes have a negative connotation. They are considered the leftover liens that weren't purchased because they had little to no value. And that may be the case for some; however, you can also find excellent properties over the counter if you know how to do your due diligence and you have the right tools available to you.
You can also find seasoned tax liens out of the redemption period and ready for a tax application. At the right-hand side of the page, under this advanced search menu, we have the option of applying different filters. This is intended to simplify the due diligence process.
So the first thing you're going to do is change your listing type to “county held”. You can also select the type of property that you want to research. For example, I will scroll down, and I will click on residential. My favorite feature of this is the auction year. This allows you to select a specific year that the tax lien was auctioned off so that you can find tax lien certificates that are already out of the redemption period and ready for a tax deed application.
For example, you can set your auction year to 2018, and then click search. From here, you can see the images of the county sites' properties to see what you would most likely be interested in. If you want to add one of these properties to the “my favorites” list, select the heart icon in the top right corner. The property should now be on my list of favorite assets. This will allow you to perform your due diligence later. Now, if I want more information on the property than what's offered on this property card, I can click on this details icon in the top right corner, and it will expand on the information about the parcel.
This will give you a quick overview on the right-hand side on this details menu. If you scroll down, you can obtain more data that we previously pulled directly from the county appraiser website. If you wanted to search the information on the property appraiser/assessor page or go directly to the tax collector page, we've included links to those websites as well. And when you've decided that you're ready to purchase this tax lien certificate, it'll come up here where it says purchase from jurisdiction, and then you will follow the prompts on the county website to purchase that certificate.
If you want to look at my favorite assets list, scroll down to the bottom right corner and click the “see all” button.
This will allow you to search these properties further. These are some of the properties that I have favorited so I can follow up with them later. And the search feature is relatively similar to what we just looked at before. If you want more information about the property, click on this details icon, and it will expand on the information down here. And then the links to the property assessor/appraiser page and the tax collector page are right here as well. Now we would recommend spending a considerable amount of time on this portion of the site to get more familiar with it because this will be one of the best tools you have available to you.
Marketplace Pro: Marketplace Tab
The marketplace tab will consist of tax liens and tax deeds that are available for purchase. Now on the right-hand side of the page, we have our advanced search, which allows you to filter through the available properties. The first thing you want to do is change my property type to vacant residential. And then I'll also set my minimum price.
So if you change this to $15,000. This means that you are not looking at any property with an assessed value of lower than $15,000. This is a pretty simple search. You can cater this to be however you want. But click “search” for now. It should show you the property value that has an assessed value of $15,000 or higher. If you're going through this list and can click the heart icon in the top right corner, it will add it to my favorites down here at the bottom.
If you want more information about a property than what shows up on this front page, you can click this details icon in the top right corner of the property card. And it will give you more information about the parcel, including the imagery, and all of this data is pulled from the county property appraiser website. To make sure that all of the information we have is accurate. If you want to search for the information directly on those sites, there are also links to the property appraiser and tax collector pages.
You can get an idea of how much due diligence may be needed when you evaluate the property description, and this is when Marketplace Pro software comes in handy.
If you are familiar with the Multiple Listing Service platform used by real estate brokerages, you will love the intuitive user interface of Marketplace Pro, which is the first step tax lien investors should take when evaluating investment opportunities. Contact our office today to arrange a free demo of Marketplace Pro; once you get the hang of it, we can start discussing due diligence strategies.
