Wednesday, May 1, 2013

The lucrative investment trend hedge funds don't want you to know about





Fortune writes:  Hedge fund executives who descended on Miami last month for a conference on unpaid property taxes were treated to waterfront cruises of estates owned by Madonna, Shaquille O'Neill and Elizabeth Taylor. But unlike those celebrity residences, the houses the profit-chasing investors were hunting at the gathering have a prosaic facade: tax liens.

Here's how it works: Several times each year, municipalities in 28 states, plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, auction off scores of property tax liens, also called certificates, to investors. The rules and rates vary, but homeowners typically have from six months to two years to pay back the notes, plus interest, or lose their homes to the investors. Less than 1% of sales go that foreclosure route, said Brad Westover, executive director of the National Tax Lien Association, which sponsored the Miami conference. Investors immediately pay the municipalities the taxes owed, then over time collect that amount plus interest from the homeowner….

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