In this episode, a Washington state acquisition reveals the complexities of tax deed properties acquired within the last three years. The seller transferred ownership via tax deed only three years ago, triggering title clearance requirements that add $1,500-$2,500 in costs and 30-45 days to closing timelines through Tax Title Services (TTS).
Key Takeaways:
- Tax Deed Four-Year Rule Most states require either quiet title suits or specialized services like TTS for tax deeds transferred within the last 4-5 years before title becomes marketable.
- TTS Double-Hit Structure Tax Title Services charges $750-$2,500 for clearance plus requires a separate local title company for final closing, creating dual fee exposure that must be budgeted upfront.
- 30-Day Contracts Don’t Work Even with TTS rush service ($400 extra), conservative timelines require 45+ days minimum—30 days for clearance plus 2 weeks for final title prep.
- 3X Exit Potential Justified Risk The Washington property shows possible 200K+ builder buyer interest on a sub-70K purchase despite tax deed complications and aggressive seller terms.
Listen to the full episode to hear how creative contract language and LLM-generated legalese solved the timing crunch with an uncooperative seller.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over at Serious Land Capital, vacant land funding partner. Today I wanted to go over a deal we’re currently working on in Washington state. Interestingly, the seller has the property via a tax deed that was only transferred over into his name three years ago
so usually when tax deeds are that recent, it really varies state by state, but general rule is like within the last four to five years for most States, you’re going to have to either do a suit to quiet title or utilize tax title services, as an alternative to.
pursuing that suit to quiet title.
So tax deeds are really harken back to when we first got into the land industry. The individual we learned from acquired almost all of his properties at tax auctions in Florida and, you know, basically self sold everything, a lot of it via owner finance. And, you know, once we got into the game, well, first off, this was,
late 2019, early 2020, and very quickly, a lot of those tax auctions lost all of their alpha and they, you know, properties were just selling for basically market value. You couldn’t, you couldn’t figure out the margin anymore. So plus, you know, it’s just, it’s not a very efficient system because you have to, you know, DD hardcore all of these properties because you show up to the auction, you have to front cash.
Um, if you win it, so if you’re even slightly off on your D D and you could be buying a lemon, um, but you have no idea who the other bidders are. So you could end up and yeah, most of the time it was, you you end up doing a ton of extra legwork, uh, for properties that just end up getting bid up higher than you’d expect. So it ends up being a pretty inefficient system, um, that we quickly.
pivoted away from, you know, we really focused on that tax, tax auction sale initially. But yeah, the problem was, you know, a lot of these were cheaper properties. And again, you know, the folks who are working with, you know, it generally be self-closed situations, sometimes cash deals, sometimes owner finance. But, know, if you try to go through a title company, they’re like, Hey, we can’t actually transfer this because it’s a
tax deed and at least within Florida, again, it was like that four years need to pass from the time of acquisition of a tax deed in order for the title to be considered clean. Otherwise you have to go through a suit to quiet title or just transfer via quick claim deed. So it’s not marketable title. And so we ran this issue a few times where we want, know, the individual we’re working with was not the most savory individual. That’s a story for another, another time, but you know, he was
doing a lot of these off-market, self-closed sales, either owner finance, that could take years to sell. Usually, he would try to close everything out from seller finance within two years, I think, on average. I don’t know, it’s been a while, been five years, right? Or cash deals, okay, transferring it over. But, know.
If the other individual buying it ever wanted to try to sell it again, like it’s not really clean title. So it was, it was not the best setup. So ultimately whenever we would come across tax deeds, it’s like, okay, there has to be a way, you know, we either have to bake in the time and the costs to do a suit to quiet title or text title services will provide an alternative to basically quiet title. So that marketable title can be.
Presented and initially even five years ago TTS, you know, text title services for short Was only available in a few states now. They’re nationwide So, you know, it’s just a go-to whenever these situations may arise and they have different fees depending on the state Usually in between like fifteen hundred Twenty five hundred bucks at the higher end for their service
So I’m always trying to account for that just in case, you know, a tax deed situation arises because, if we acquire the property, we need to sell it. and we’re not going to be doing self closes. Like everything that we go after tends to be more expensive. And this particular property, it looks like the seller had already tried to sell it at one point too. and wasn’t able to get clear title. like.
He needed somebody under a cash crunch situation. Plus, you know, somebody else is going to come in and try to clear this up. And being kind of hard ball about the contract, you know, is only giving us 30 days. Otherwise you said, okay, I’m going to raise the price by 5k, you know, the longer you guys take. But when we reached out to TTS, I actually hadn’t worked with them prior. Uh, and, uh, Seth Williams said, um, already tips training.
podcast, he interviewed one of the founders or one of the lead principals at TTS a while ago, maybe a few years ago. If you want to check out more info about them, really interesting service.
It does take a little bit of time. So on average, it takes 30 to 45 days for them to run their process to effectively clear title. Or you can add a rush service for an extra 400 bucks to bump the timeline to clear title within 30 days. Or at least they can’t necessarily make any guarantees.
about that, but they just, you know, they prioritize the route to go through. Plus you have to throw it on a deposit. There’s always going to be some, some work here. So I mean, there, are no firm guarantees like, and I know they’ve mentioned at least back on that podcast with Seth that, you know, sometimes they can’t fully uncover whatever is needed to clear title. Again, I’m using some vague terms here, but I think they’re, they’re rate of success is like well over 90%.
Um, so it’s, it’s a safer service most of the time, but you don’t pay more than I think your $750 deposit, uh, if they’re not able to solve the title. So, I mean, there’s an inherent risk when, when doing this, that’s why, like with this salary, he’s asking for 3,500. Initially non-refundable EMD, but like no way, not until we understand title, can be cleared here. Uh, plus we’re still doing our DD, but you know, we can do it refundable fine.
Plus we got them to bump the kind of harsher closing timeline before price goes up to 45 days because I was not familiar from TTS’s side is that they don’t actually provide the full closing service. They’re just clearing title and then they’ll have a local contact at another title company or attorney’s office who then takes all the work that TTS did to then prep.
final closing documents for the point of acquisition, but then you have to pay their title fees as well. So it’s almost like a double hit there. So that’s why you have to be really careful. If you have a tax deed type of acquisition or potentially even sale, if you had acquired tax date on your own, if you can’t put it on the buyer or whatever, then it’s going to be a more expensive and time consuming closing process because
And you have to account for 30 to 45 days on average for TTS to do their work. Plus the time it’ll take for the other title company to actually wrap up theirs. Um, it should be a, you know, relatively quicker turnaround because all, you know, basically the title commitments prepped on TTS’s side. then, you know, title company just needs to run through, uh, maybe review your company docs or whatever to prep the finalization. but yeah, conservatively, I would still bake in another two weeks.
to actually prep the clothes, you got to make sure you arrange your docs in that way. That’s why I was having the originator who brought us this deal to go back and try to renegotiate so that it could buy us more time. Cause I just didn’t see any possible route, even doing rush service to like conservatively close within 30 days from the point of contract signing. So we had to rework some things. Yeah. So those, you just got to be creative. That’s what, you know, these
LLM models are here for two. can just prep legalese really quickly based on some basic parameters. But that’s how we arranged it. And currently trying to set up. Plus TTS, they’ll ask for the tax deed or at least a copy of it if available. So that’s something to note as well there. Usually a lot of…
title companies, won’t be asking for anything like that. But that was an unusual request. But again, these guys are specialists, as far as I’m aware, the only title company that does anything like this in the country. So they’ve carved out a particular niche for themselves. So that’s just to update you as far as how we’ve handled this side of the deal.
And again, seller was, he was just another story. And then he was like asking to do a 72 hour write a first refusal for if we can’t close in 45 days, that if he receives another offer within that three day period, we would either have the chance to fully close out at our original purchase price, or he could move on and not be restricted to for us purchasing again. But it’s such a weird request because like, obviously we would have closed as soon as we could get.
clear title on it. It’s just, you we have to run through this process. We try to explain, Hey, you got a tax deed here. It’s just not, it’s not as easy. Um, but I’m like, you know, I think the risk of that is pretty low and that we could get all of this done within 45 days. yeah, sometimes with these sellers and our loose cannons, if they ask for weird requests, sometimes like I just have to weigh the pros and the cons. Like, okay, are we getting, are we getting the better end of the deal here? Which to me was extending.
the harsher penalties from 30 days to 45 days. And I’m like, okay, if you ask for some other stuff, fine. we’ll, we’ll figure it out if it gets closer to there and we’ll have a lot more info by that time anyway. but, you know, again, sometimes you just got to play the game and, and figure out, okay, what’s, what’s acceptable or not, or, you know, what, what are some of these paper tiger, clauses that might be thrown into contracts? that probably won’t.
won’t come back to bite us. So with that in mind, it looks like we can solve this one. Plus we were trying to line up a builder buyer. Even the first one we talked to, it seems likely they’re going to come in at like over a 200 K purchase price. It’s a nice piece of land. It could be close to like a three X exit based on the purchase price, which would be pretty incredible. Again, in this market, try to line up.
you we wouldn’t be able to do a double close situation because, you know, the timeline for builder feasibility in relation to what we’re trying to do from the seller side and at tax deed involvement. Like I want to close first before doing anything with the builder and avoid being snaked with the deal. But, you know, it’s possible to get some equity upside in a near double close situation by lining up a presumptive buyer prior to even purchasing on our side. That’s always.
My preferred way to go about things whenever possible, especially again, in an overall more difficult volatile macro economy. know things have calmed a light slightly, a little bit compared to a month ago. But you know, I would still be very cautious out there. And that’s what the larger players are still doing. So with all that in mind, SeriousLand.Capital, friend of your funding needs.
zero cost review of your land deals at land daily diligence. Facebook group just got off one of those sessions just now and landpricer.ai for most simple and accurate way to price land was getting a lot more work on those prompts. Really getting comfortable there. can’t, couldn’t be more excited for what we’re able to present to you all here. ASAP just got to keep after it. Subscribe and share also unconference, Dave Denniston, landlandconference.com $200 off your ticket using my last name.
Hope to see you there before tickets are gone. Bye.
