In Florida you can pay a stranger's $3,100 property tax bill and the county will either make him pay you 18% interest or hand you his house This is a real government program. It has run every June since before your grandfather was born, and the people who show up to it are hedge funds with $200 million and a handful of retirees who figured it out from a library book How it works. A homeowner skips his property taxes. The county needs the money now, so it auctions off the right to collect that debt. You pay the county the $3,100. The homeowner now owes you the $3,100 plus interest at a rate the state wrote into law. Florida caps it at 18%. Arizona 16%. Iowa 24%. Texas skips the lien and sells the deed itself, and if the owner wants his house back inside the first year he pays you a 25% penalty on top of what you paid Then one of two things happens Around 95 times out of 100 the owner pays. Usually within a year, usually because his mortgage company finds out and pays it for him. The county mails you a check for your $3,100 plus the interest. You never spoke to the homeowner The other 5, nobody pays. In Florida you wait 2 years, apply for a tax deed, and the property goes to auction where you either get paid out of the sale or take the house "the rates get bid down" They do, on the liens the funds want. The funds run models on $40,000 liens on nice houses and bid the rate down to almost nothing, and Florida still guarantees you a 5% minimum. The play sits under their radar: liens under $2,000 that a model can't be bothered with, rural counties, and the county-held certificates nobody bid on at all, which you can buy over the counter at the full 18% Now the credit part Your cost of money is 0%. The state's rate on the lien is 16 to 18. A guy with $60,000 of 0% business credit and a Tuesday afternoon builds a portfolio of forty $1,500 liens across two counties. If the average comes in at 12% after bid-downs that's $7,200 a year in interest the government collects for him, and his cards get paid off from redemptions inside the promo window. Worst case on any single lien, he owns a lot in Polk County The 20 minutes of homework that separates this from gambling: Pull the parcel on the county appraiser site. Improved residential only. Skip vacant land, drainage ditches and gas stations Skip anything with an IRS lien or a bankruptcy on the owner Check the redemption period and the rate for your state before you bid Register on the county's auction site (Florida runs on LienHub and RealAuction) and post the deposit Buy the small ones. Buy the county-held ones. Ignore the pretty ones The county sends you a check. It has the homeowner's name on it (we fund the portfolio at 0%. 700+ only. link in bio)