The Science of Flipping
The Hidden Gem of Tax Lien Investing with 33-Year Expert | Tony Martinez
Fri, 7 Feb 2025
FREE Training: To Learn how to acquire properties for as little as $4,000, Go to: FreeCrashCourse.com Visit the U.S. Tax Lien Association Website: USTaxLienAssociation.com -- In this episode of The Science of Flipping, I sit down with Tony Martinez, a 33-year veteran in tax lien investing and founder of the U.S. Tax Lien Association. Tony reveals how he acquires properties for as little as $4,000–$20,000—free and clear, with no mortgage or liens—using Over-the-Counter (OTC) Tax Deed Acquisitions, a strategy that bypasses competitive tax auctions. He explains how counties hold thousands of tax-defaulted properties, why most investors overlook these opportunities, and how his 14-point research system ensures he only buys profitable properties. Tony debunks common myths about tax liens, warns against bad information in the industry, and shares real-life case studies of deals where he and his students have turned small investments into huge profits. If you’re struggling to find off-market deals, this episode is a must-listen—and Tony’s FreeCrashCourse.com is the perfect place to start. 🚀 -- About Tony: Tony Martinez is the Founder & CEO of the U.S. Tax Lien Association (USTLA), an organization that shows people how to achieve their financial goals through the power of tax lien investing. Tony has over 33 years of expert experience investing in tax lien certificates and tax deed properties and has completed over 2,500 successful tax deed property transactions for his own portfolio and has the irrefutable public record documentation to prove it. USTLA is the “go to” resource for top real estate investment experts as well as novices for the most credible, accurate, and up to date information on investing in tax lien certificates and tax deed properties. Tony and his team of experts pride themselves on helping average Americans starting with limited capital enter the lucrative world of real estate investing. -- 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧: After investing in real estate for over 17 years and almost 3000 deals done, Justin has created a business that generates 7 figures in active income through wholesaling and fix and flipping as well as accumulating millions of dollars of rental properties including 5 apartment buildings, 50+ single family homes, and 1 storage facility Justins longevity in real estate is due to his ability to look around the corners, adapt to changing markets, perfecting Raising private capital, and focusing on lead generation which allows him to not just wholesale and fix & flip, but also accumulate wealth through long term holds. His success in real estate led him to start The Entrepreneur DNA podcast, The Science Of Flipping podcast and REI LIVE education company, where he has coached and mentored thousands of aspiring and active investors over the last decade. He is a nationally recognized speaker and is on a mission to educate as many people as possible on becoming a successful dynamic real estate investor. 𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝒓𝒐𝒔 𝑯𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝑻𝒐 𝑺𝒂𝒚 𝑨𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝑱𝒖𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒏: “Justin is one of the best trainers in this space. He really gives everything to his tribe.” – Brent Daniels (TTP) “Justin’s ability to connect with people and help them understand what he is teaching, is unparallelled” – Kent Clothier (REWW) “We have been in the trenches flipping homes in Phoenix for over a decade, he is one of the best to do it.” – Sean Terry (Flip2Freedom) Subscribe To Justin Colby: http://youtube.com/justincolby View All My Videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/JustinColby
Chapter 1: What is tax lien investing?
It's actually good and bad. The bad thing is for someone new who doesn't know what they're doing, doesn't know how to do the research, you know, they download a list and it has 18,000 properties on it. There's just, you know, they're going to be stuck for a little bit, right? And so it does take an expertise and it doesn't take a high level. Listen, you don't need an MBA to do this.
What you do need is you do need systems and you do need processes based upon the markets that you're in. And that thing, you know, that is what we do here at USTLA. And so, but right now, I'll just tell you in general right now, let me tell you where we have active acquisitions going right now. And so this would mean, I'm talking 2024, 2025.
And that doesn't mean that in 2026, they're going to be exactly the same. But I'll give you a general sense so people will know. We have holdings in Ohio. We have holdings in Missouri. We have holdings in, and I'm talking about recent acquisitions. We have holdings in Alabama, like you talked about, Mississippi, like you also discussed. Off the top of my head. Yeah.
And we'll continue to, those are markets that I can tell you right now that we will definitely be focused on for 2025. We've done some very, very small acquisitions in Michigan in 2024. Yeah. And we're going to be looking in Michigan this year and we'll see how, we'll see how that goes.
So I know you and I, you know, we know each other for years and we were going back and forth via text and you're like, look at this property. I just picked up for like five grand and it wasn't exactly five grand, but it was 4,000 or 5,000 or some change. Like how, so when you go to these, the, the County, I think it's a company that actually turns it into a deed, right?
No, it's actually, it's actually, they're still either County or state entities.
So do you just make an offer in the same function or do they say, hey, Tony, if you want it, it's $4,891,000. Like what, how does that work?
Yeah, in those markets, like you just discussed, the way it works is you do all the research, looks like a great deal. And once we've done all the research, what you're doing, you're submitting an application. So you fill out this application, you submit it. Let's say it's a state entity or a county entity. Doesn't really matter.
And what they're going to do is they're going to send you back what's called a price quote. Now, depending on the market, that price quote, all they're really doing in certain markets is they're punching that address in and they're pulling up all the back taxes, penalties, and interest owed. Your price is the back taxes, penalties, and interest owed, not a penny more, not a penny less.
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Chapter 2: How does Tony acquire properties for as little as $4,000?
And so if they go to freecrashcourse.com, that's freecrashcourse.com, there's a three-module training that I put together. And I promise you, if they'll watch one module, the first module, They will learn more valid information in that one module. It's not even 30 minutes long than they will find anywhere else on the internet.
And real case studies, copies of deeds, I mean, real validation, showing exactly what we do and how we do it.
Freecrashcourse.com.
Yeah, freecrashcourse.com.
And so there's a lot of similarities in what we're doing. You just have the right way to find a deeply discounted property, right? So even when I'm coaching my community, we're always talking about motivation and getting the right number. There's no difference there, but you have the secret sauce and how do you find that actual asset? So when you have a list, right?
I'm assuming you treat it very similar to if I had pulled the list of homes in any level of neighborhood. I want to know the type of asset it is. I want to know how much construction I'm going to need. I want to see some picture. Right. Is there any difference once you kind of have the list or are you looking at the same?
Well, there's there's. The way our lists come is that the challenge is like some lists don't even have, you'll have a list of 800 properties and there's no physical address. So we have to start with a property number and take that property number. And from that property number, one of those digits, right? It can be a two digit or three digit is gonna tell what type of asset class it is.
And it's gonna tell whether it's land, a single family, residential, industrial. And so we have to kind of dig and do some research, find the key to that property number. and then sort our list based upon that to start off with. So our list and the other challenge for us, lists vary from county to county. What they put on the list is going to vary county to county.
And so really, you have to understand what each column means. And so that's one thing that's very different, because it's not just like, hey, here's a list of great properties with all the information that's going to be the same on every single list.
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