Ontario Tax Sale Property Forum
Tax Sale Forum => Announcements => Topic started by: OTS Jeff on February 13, 2012, 08:38:49 PM
-
The inability to precisely locate some properties can be a major problem for potential tax sale investors. There are two main causes of this problem:
1. Vacant lands that don't have a municipal address
2. Google maps that point at the wrong property
We now have a solution to this problem.
We recently signed a licensing agreement with a company that has superb new technology. This technology gives us the ability to find virtually any properties--even vacant lands that don't have a municipal address--and accurately locate them on Google Maps. We call this new ability Green Arrow NavigationTM.
We're now using Green Arrow NavigationTM for our Featured Properties. It's available free of charge; no membership is required.
We'll soon be listing some vacant lands in Durham and Northumberland. The full power of Green Arrow NavigationTM will be readily apparent on those properties.
I hope you'll find this new free service to be helpful. For details on it please go to ontariotaxsales.ca/
Best regards,
Jeff Oberman
President
OntarioTaxSales.ca
-
The inability to precisely locate some properties can be a major problem for potential tax sale investors. There are two main causes of this problem:
1. Vacant lands that don't have a municipal address
2. Google maps that point at the wrong property
We now have a solution to this problem.
We recently signed a licensing agreement with a company that has superb new technology.
Jeff:
Going back to my first computer oriented days; now almost 50 years ago, I had something drilled into me
That I never forgot; "Garbage in, Garbage out". My concern is not the technolgy per se, but the quality of the underlying property information which (hopefully only) in a few cases may not be up to the accuracy you hope to obtain from the deployment of this technology.
I was personally involved in a case in one of the counties that you wish to first use this technology that took almost six months to resolve and which my lawyer estimated could affect as many as 3,000 properties locally. I am told higher levels of the land registry system had to get involved and at one time we were concerned that we may have gone to court to resolve the issues.
I have a recommendation for you that if accepted may help both yourselves and users of your system to identify when one of these cases occurs and that the problem is not with your technology but with the underlying legal property description/survey accuracy.
From a tax sale property purchaser standpoint all of us want clean transactions and if there are possible risks of fundamental problems that is a pretty important business issue for all of us. As my information is proprietary I would like to initially use the private message route to disclose certain private examples so that you can better understand what I believe to be the issue, talk it out and then explain it to users of this website. As a non lawyer and non surveyor I am not an expert in these matters, but the last thing I want to find out when I purchase a tax sale or a surplus sale property, that we end up in court because of it.
If you agree I would appreciate if you acknowledge this and we will go private for a while and report back our findings tothe board jointly. Except for private information I will agree to release copyright on this issue and any findings we jointly agree to.
-
The inability to precisely locate some properties can be a major problem for potential tax sale investors. There are two main causes of this problem:
1. Vacant lands that don't have a municipal address
2. Google maps that point at the wrong property
We now have a solution to this problem.
We recently signed a licensing agreement with a company that has superb new technology. This technology gives us the ability to find virtually any properties--even vacant lands that don't have a municipal address--and accurately locate them on Google Maps.
For tax sales G2020 said it best; "There is either a problem with the Owner or the property". To reduce the risk anyone with a shred of sanity should run a legal check and maybe more then one if the property is worthwhile.
The problem is the legal check will not reveal all problems with the property; particularly for rural vacant property. While the adoption of the land titles system should reduce property boundary issues in the city; in the country it sometimes is a different story.
As far as I can see this has always been an issue in some cases; particularly with tax sales where previous owners have often not defended their boundary rights. The problem is that until now there has been no way to identify if there is a potential problem until post tax sale and by then it maybe too late.
Taking at face value OTS's claim this is the best available technology; it offers us the potential to at least see if there maybe a potential issue prior to making a bid. Two recent sales opportunities illustrate the problem and value of improved technology.
First on the large Madoc property that was just redeemed before the tax sale; the aerial photographs revealed an apparently illegal dam constructed on the neighbours property. If true this problem poses a significant risk to the value of the property and the bid. In one sentence there is a big difference in value between a swamp and a lake. I for one was disapointed this did not come to bid because I was wondering what the bids would be like as people decided to ignore and or treat seriously this issue. This used the old technology so there was no easy way to identify if this was the problems with google mapping or a more serious issue.
The next one is the current Rice Lake waterfront which comes up at the end of March and if you look at the aerial photos carefully; it shows the property goes through the neighbours property; specifically his cottage. Comparing it to on the ground driveby research (some of us are willing to get our cars muddy) the property boundary maybe off by about 30 feet to the east. This is a big issue because you have about 1/3 of the property area at risk to a quit claim.
NOTE IN PARTICULAR THE DIFFERENCE IN WORDING ON THE OTS WEBSITE FOR THIS PROPERTY COMPARED TO THE NEXT PROPERTY LISTED.
"The boundary DOES NOT line up exactly with the photo and it may not be a current representation of the structures as shown in the image"
THEY HAVE HIGHLIGHTED THAT THIS IS AN ISSUE THAT YOU IGNORE AT YOUR PERIL. THERE IS A MAJOR DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE STANDARD WORDING OF "MAY NOT" TO "DOES NOT"
I think this one has a higher likelihood of going to sale so it will be interesting to see how the bidders treat this.
Now I ask you a question? Did you pick this difference up or not ???. The answer will go a long way to explain whether you will make money in this business or not. If you are not careful you can lose a lot of money.