re: Anybody ever participate in a county tax sale? Paging I Love Bama

I've talked to a few guys in my office about it too.

One guy owns a couple lots in a residential subdivision. He also purchased some commercial properties that were paid off almost immediately.
Basically he said some downsides were:
It took the county 3 months to pay get him his money back after the taxes were paid off (3 months after tax sale). So even though he got 1% return a month for the 3 months it took a total of six months and he only got 3% return.

You can obviously get fricked if you spend a good amount of money to pay taxes/lawyer on a property that has some environmental problems or something of that sort.

He purchased a very large sum tax bill (huge commercial property) hoping it'd be immediately paid off.. he ended up having to pay the 2nd year as well which was another 75k cash (number may be incorrect can't remember exactly)