Why the Question Is Reasonable Here
Because Alabama gives a second route to the same property. A buyer can acquire from you by contract, or acquire at a tax sale and then wait out a redemption period, and both are legitimate businesses.
What is worth knowing is which one you are talking to, and whether a firm that does both has any reason to prefer that your situation does not resolve. The full position is on our page covering redemption and possession.
Is It Rude to Ask?
The Buyer Who Only Buys From Owners
Their interest is aligned with yours in a narrow but real way: they want your file to close, which means they want your tax position to be clean and your title to be conveyable.
They will usually check the tax records before making an offer and tell you what they found, because a sale they cannot complete is worth nothing to them.
The Buyer Who Also Bids
Not disqualifying, and worth understanding. Ask how they separate the two, and what happens to an address you have discussed with them if you decline.
The test: a firm with a real answer describes a policy. One without one describes an intention. On a property that may be heading toward a sale list, the difference between those matters.
The Buyer Who Knows Something You Do Not
The situation this market produces regularly. Tax records are public, so a buyer can learn that a property has already been sold before the owner does.
The question that reveals them: ask directly what the tax records show for your parcel, early in the first conversation. A buyer who has looked will tell you. One who deflects has either not looked, which is careless, or has looked and is holding it, which is worse.
The Buyer Who Offers to Deal With the Tax Purchaser
Where a sale has already happened, be careful. Redemption rights are yours, and a buyer negotiating with a tax purchaser about your property is negotiating about an asset you may still be able to reclaim.
The rule worth holding: information from a buyer is useful, and acting in the matter is for you and your lawyer.
Contract Assigners
Some parties sign to buy and sell the contract on before closing. Where taxes are behind and a sale date may be approaching, that delay is not neutral, and the eventual purchaser inherits a timetable they were never part of assessing.
The question that catches it: which entity will appear on the deed. A principal buyer gives you a name you can search in the same records.
The Records Worth Pulling
The tax office, for your parcel. Whether anything is outstanding and whether a sale has occurred. Public, free, and the single most important search available to you.
The recorded deeds, for the buyer's entity. Tax deeds are recorded. What a firm has actually acquired, and how, describes it better than its marketing does.
The county parcel record. For which county and city hold the property.
Local sale evidence. For what the house would be worth repaired, from somebody who is not buying.
Where We Fit, and Where We Do Not
We buy as principal, from owners, in our own entity, with our own funds, and we take title. We do not assign contracts, and we do not bid at tax sales on properties we have discussed with somebody. Ask us both questions and the answers should be specific.
We are frequently not the right answer. Over the Mountain and across much of Shelby County, where values carry the work and taxes are current, a listing or a rehabber will beat us outright. Our written figure says so when the numbers point there. What happens from there is on our page about how the process actually runs.
Questions About Buyers
One Offer Is Far Above the Others.
Ask what each assumed about the tax position and about title. On this stock the highest offer is sometimes the one that has not checked.
A Buyer Says My Taxes Are Not Their Concern.
They are, because a tax sale affects what you can convey. A buyer uninterested in that has not thought about closing.
Does a Buyer Need a Licence?
Not to buy as a principal and take title. Marketing property on behalf of others requires an Alabama real estate licence, and the state lookup is free.