Building Reliable Wealth Through Tax Sales and Real Assets with Brian Seidensticker - Episode - 570

The nice thing about tax liens is you don't have to have $1 million to start either, right? You can buy tax liens for less than $1,000. And so if you're looking to invest with something and if you don't have enough capital to do something else, right, you can start with this, right? Build it up over time, make way more than you would make letting it sit in a CD right now or bank account earning, I think CDs are probably 4-ish, 5-ish percent, which is, I'd say, a recent historic high, you can put it in something that's going to earn double that, right? Or triple that.

High achievers don't need more chaos. They need systems. In Calm Cash Flow Beyond Wall Street, discover how structured data engineering precision and long-term strategies can transform overlooked tax liens and deeds into steady income streams. Welcome to Streams to Impact, brought to you by Studebaker Capital. I'm your host, Dr. Allen. This show is designed for high-achieving professionals, individuals who are fulfilled in their careers, who have built meaningful income, and who are not looking for a second job, but are looking for a smarter way to put their money to work. Because there comes a point when earning more isn't the solution, allocating better is. If you've ever felt that subtle tension between professional success and financial uncertainty, if you've ever wondered Whether your portfolio is truly structured for resilience, then you are exactly where you need to be. Beyond the Paycheck is the Financial Clarity Compass, an instructional mini masterclass I created for professionals who want to replace time-for-money income with multiple streams of passive income through secure, high-yield appreciating assets. This private educational experience is our gift to you, and you can claim this by going to—

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Well, what happens when you apply engineering precision to one of the most overlooked corners of finance? Well, you get a disciplined investor who saw opportunity where others saw paperwork and built a platform that turns delinquent property taxes into structured, Predictable income. Today's guest is Brian Seidensticker, engineer turned real estate investor and founder of Tax Sale Resources. Rather than chasing trends or reacting to Wall Street volatility, Brian developed a methodological strategy around tax liens and tax deeds, using data, risk controls, and long-term thinking to generate Steady returns. His philosophy is straightforward. Durable wealth is not built on hype. It is built on structure, process, and mastering the rules better than the crowd. For high-income professionals seeking capital that works quietly in the background without another job or daily market stress, this approach offers a compelling alternative. So we'll be exploring how unpaid property taxes become an asset class, how engineering discipline sharpens investment decisions and what it means to design wealth with intention instead of emotion. So Brian, welcome to the show. Glad you are with us today. So you began your career as a systems engineer trained to solve complex technical problems. And at a personal level, what was the moment or the series of moments that made You questioned how money was supposed to work and pushed you to think and rethink investing altogether.

Big question. Well, I'll start with, I guess, thank you, Alan, for having me and happy to be here. And I'm excited to kind of talk a little bit more about my journey. I guess I'll say our journey because it certainly wasn't a me-only thing on this side. But I guess to dive in on your question of it definitely wasn't a single moment, it was a series of moments. 3 that really stand out in my mind is, let's see, revolving around the realization of maybe not just money, but just like, hey, this path that I'm on in life maybe isn't going to result in the happiness that I'm looking for. You know, there's got to be another way, right? I didn't necessarily know what that other way was, but some things that came to mind, right, is one is a project I was working on. And this is going to sound boring, but I was working on basically a type of battery that was, you know, a new type of battery, produces a lot of energy in a very short amount of time. And it does it in a way that can result in what they call runaway or Potentially an explosion. And I was on the team that was really investigating the solutions to this, that most of the details don't matter. But the epiphany that I had was when I learned the price of these batteries to us, right, as the contractor, the battery maker. And then I also later learned what the price to the government agency, right, after it goes through us and then probably 2 or 3 other contractors on its way up. And that gigantic disparity between the 2 prices, I just was like, it was like a deflating moment, right? And I mean, I don't think it's any secret, right, that federal government isn't the best at managing spending, but it was just, I don't know, it was just a deflating moment of like, man, it's just hard to be a part of that, right? And there's got to be a better way, right? I'm not a part of the solution to that particular problem, but that was like the first time in my mind maybe I had a doubt of what I was doing. The next time where I really had kind of a more cementing thought in my mind was I always felt every day that I was getting a lot done because you go in and you run and you run and you run and you go home and you're tired and you go to bed and you wake up and you do it again. And, I ended up going on vacation for almost 6 weeks And I was very nervous leading up to that because getting people up to speed and there's a lot going on and making sure that things weren't going to drop through the cracks while I was gone. Well, lo and behold, I get back and I step right in as if I haven't even been out, right? It was kind of, again, another deflating moment of, wow, I feel like I'm getting a lot done, but am I just a hamster on a wheel here? And that's really the moment I coined the term of I was in a very cool I thought a very cool industry. I was working on missile defense programs as an aerospace engineer, but I termed the thing of it's 2 years of banging your head against the wall for what ends up being 2 minutes of cool. And that difference, one didn't necessarily outweigh the other. It wasn't enough cool to outweigh the banging my head against the wall feeling. So, those are really what kind of pushed me further in the direction. I had already had what I call an early 20s crisis when I got my first internship in engineering, and engineering ended up being not what I thought it was. It was much more computer work versus I was very hands-on, loved to work on things, and realized maybe it's a tech position that I really wanted to do in the engineering world and not necessarily the— the, um, person behind the, the screen, right, on a computer. Um, so I'd already had that. So I, I had started fixing and flipping properties really as a side hustle, if you will, or as a second thing. But you put that, that had already been going on, along with these epiphanies through my normal job and day, and, and kind of all of that culminated in I've got to do something different. And that's really where, um, I started actively seeking some other form of producing income, you know, or I'd say as a career and not just a side gig is probably a better way to put it.

Mm-hmm.

And really was introduced to what became, you know, Tax Sale Resources and the tax sale space on the wrong side of a tax lien, quite frankly. I mentioned, you know, we were fixing and flipping properties and we actually were upside down in one. This is in 2007, 2008. Timeframe. And so I ended up getting a bunch of notices about a potential tax lien being placed. And that was the first time I was introduced to this whole concept and all these letters that came from different, I'll say, private entities, right, investors, which got me really researching this whole industry that I had never heard of. Most people have never heard of, right? And lo and behold, you know, years later, and when we finally compiled the data on a nationwide scale and We were the first to do that, right? It's an $8, $9 billion annual industry that really nobody knows about. And that pales in comparison compared to the multi-trillion-dollar real estate industry as a whole. But at the time, it was, I think, bigger, if not as big as the NBA, right? Everybody's heard about NBA. And so, it's a pretty sizable investment avenue that folks just had never heard of. So, that's, I guess, a longer story, Alan, to how I went from, hey, I'm an aerospace engineer having what I thought was a dream job to, I guess, now I'm in the tax lien space and I get questioned all the time like, why did I make that leap from what sounds cool to what sounds extremely boring? And they couldn't be the actual polar opposites in the opposite direction.

Well, thank you for sharing that. It's interesting how People get to where they get, and it's always a way that I like to start the show is to just give us a foundation of what brought you to where you are today. So let's get into tax liens. Like you said, a lot of people have never heard of them, don't know what they are. So if you could just, you know, give us a ground level definition of what tax liens are and tax deeds and what's the difference between them and how it is that this works for investors?

Yeah, so let me explain really the whole process, right? And then I think that'll help answer like where investors' opportunities, you know, fall in here. But I'll take one step back and, right, most people don't even, you know, really think about this, let alone talk about it. Like what happens if somebody doesn't pay their property tax?

Right.

And when I say tax lien, tax deed, I'm talking about property taxes, not IRS tax liens or anything like that. That's a whole separate ball of wax. But, um, so what happens if you don't pay your property taxes? Most people pay a mortgage, right? And included in that mortgage is an amount that goes toward paying taxes and insurance. They don't even think twice because it's done automatically in one payment. Um, but if you pay your mortgage off, or you might be in a mortgage where that isn't included in your mortgage payment, right? You have to pay your taxes separately. Right. And most people pay them. Vast majority of people pay them on time or is paid on their behalf on time. And so it never even crosses our mind. But if you don't pay your property taxes, what happens? Right. And if one person in a county or a jurisdiction doesn't pay their property taxes, it's not really a— it's not a big deal for the county, right, to be down a few thousand bucks. They usually have a multimillion-dollar, you know, tens of millions of dollars budget, right? Where it can get sketchy, right, or harder for jurisdictions is when a lot of people don't pay their property taxes on time. And in some of the larger jurisdictions with delinquent taxes, we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars that don't get paid on time. And where does that go, right? I mean, that's what's paying teachers, right? That's what's paving the roads, is paying the policemen, firemen, right? Those tax dollars are are put to good use. And so when tax liens were invented, it really was structured as a way for the jurisdiction or the county really to balance their budget, right? Hey, I'm out tens of millions of dollars, I have these things I need to pay for and workers need to pay. Is there a mechanism to help make sure I've got the money I need in order to operate and balance our budget? And that's really how the tax lien and eventually a tax deed process came to be. And this really is today, it's a 2-part process. And that changed It's always been a 2-part process in many states, but about half the country only had a 1-part process. And the Supreme Court recently ruled and said, hey, you know, for there to be a taking of property, there has to be just compensation. And so now there's a 2-part process really everywhere in the country.

Mm-hmm.

And that 2-part process is this, right? So part 1 is the tax lien phase, really. And so what happens here is the county or the jurisdiction that's short on their money Right? They go out to third-party investors and say, hey, I need— let's say, just for sake of example, I need $10,000 of unpaid property taxes so that I can pay my workers. If you, investor, are willing to give me that $10,000, right, I will not only return your $10,000 of principal, but I will also— whatever penalty or interest that is applied to the person that pays late, I'm going to give that to you as the investor. And on top of that, I'm going to file a lien against the property, right, to ensure that you're collateralized on that investment. So if something goes wrong along the way, then the property itself, you know, you would be able to foreclose on it just like a mortgage would be able to foreclose on it, right, and take ownership of that property if the worst-case scenario happens, which is very, very rare, and nobody ever pays the property taxes, right? during what we call redemption period. And that part one, right, is that's the tax lien, right? The opportunity for investors is to purchase that tax lien, right? And then they get the interest, you know, that's accrued, right? Which equates to the penalty interest that the homeowner's going to pay for paying late, right?

Mm-hmm.

That's the investment opportunity. Now, the downside of that is you don't know if or when the property owner is going to pay their property taxes. There's very rarely, you know, a monthly payment option. And so you as the investor, Have no idea when you're going to get your principal back with interest. It could be tomorrow, it could be 5 years from now. It just kind of depends on the, on the process. So there's an unknown there. Now, the second part, right, or part 2 is what I'll call the tax deed process. And this happens only when that property owner doesn't ever pay their property taxes. And that's not a couple of months, right? That can be in most cases years down the road. And if they never pay the property taxes, then the lienholder, right, the investor gets to start a foreclosure process. Very again, very similar to like a mortgage holder gets to start a foreclosure process. That is usually a court-led process, right? Not always, but usually court-led, and it results or ends or culminates in an auction of the actual property itself. Now, in that piece of the process, right, it's a deed, right? They're selling the property, and so you don't you as the investor aren't just you don't just have interest. interest in the property and have a lien on it, right? You're buying that property. And so you have ownership of that property and you have all of the upside and the downside, right? That comes with, you know, the proud ownership of property. And that's the tax deed, right? So it's really both of those are what I would call tax sale, right? If you put both of those together. But that's the industry and the opportunities in a nutshell. Does that help?

Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. So you— so there could actually be 2 paydays, I guess, with that, the interest on the lien, and then if it isn't paid, then you get the property and you can sell the property.

Well, so now I guess really what has happened is as a lienholder, you were essentially guaranteed to get paid out now, or if If it's a lien on a property of value, right? Because the key is it does have to have value so that somebody else buys it at the tax deed auction. And part of the proceeds from that tax deed auction go to paying you, the lienholder, right? Now, in theory, right, if you're the lienholder, you could go to the deed auction and bid, right? And then you're paying yourself, right?

Mm-hmm.

At least a portion of that, but you're going to have to pay more than that in order to obtain ownership of the property because it's a, bid-up process, right? You're $10,000, $20,000, you're bidding a certain percentage or up to full market value of the property at that auction. So if your goal, right, if your model is to buy the real estate, you might as well just bypass the tax lien and just go straight to the tax deed auctions. They're happening all the time, right? You can just go buy the properties through that method.

Yeah.

Well, in terms of Of your experience with investing and mistakes that people make, and you had said that you were on the wrong side of tax liens to begin with, how do people, I guess, find their way into finding solutions like tax liens?

Well, I mean, getting started in buying tax liens is not actually as hard as it may sound, right? You don't have to go through any sort of certification, right? You can literally go Google tax lien auction in a county, right? Let's say Miami-Dade County, Florida, for example. And you will find a platform out there that sells these in the May, June timeframe. And you can register for that auction, you can deposit your money, and you can buy them, right? Really without talking to anybody, right? There's nothing that says you can't. Now, that's also how you can get yourself in a lot of I'll say trouble or wasted effort buying liens that ultimately are useless. And so what I'm going to suggest, right, to everybody listening is before you go straight to that step, right, is do a lot of research upfront. And number one is just familiarizing yourself with how the process works in a state or in a county. And there's a lot of resources out there from, I'm sure, you know, tons of videos on YouTube. We, we have— I have a podcast, right? And we have resources where we talk with industry professionals like attorneys, you know, county officials, right? Really getting an understanding of how the process works in each state. And so you can educate yourself that way. You also need to definitely get an understanding, if you don't already, how to value properties, right? Because that's the number one, say, pitfall that people run into is if you don't know how to underwrite a property and you buy a lien, it's likely that you can buy a lien on a property that has no value and you've just donated essentially money to the county because you will never be able to enforce that. You'll never get your money back. It's wasted at that point in time. And so you definitely need to understand how to underwrite properties just like you buy them. And then I also, and then I would also highly recommend that after you do that initial research with YouTube, a podcast, right? There's coaches out there that you can hire that will hold your hand through this process. We are not one of those, but that should all culminate in a meeting with an attorney that's familiar with the process in the state that you're looking to invest in and ask all of the final questions, right, to them. I will say with the advent of AI, ChatGPT, you know, Gemini, they're all very, very good at answering initial questions. Being a professional in this space, I can also say Gemini and ChatGPT can be wrong and they hallucinate in certain areas, right? And so they'll get you, I'll say, 90, 95% of the way there. You'll definitely want to run it all by an attorney so that they can say, nope, this is slightly different or not right. Right. Nope. Avoid this. Right. You know, maybe they can help you target certain things or introduce you to professionals in that area. But I would recommend doing all of those things before you actually put dollars in deposit and start buying.

Well, how is it that these tax sales can fit into a broader, well-structured wealth plan? In other words, how do you go about allocating a strategy like this that is ultimately designed for financial independence rather than just short-term speculation?

Yeah, I think the nice thing is if you know what you're doing and you underwrite well, it's not impossible, but can be a very secure investment because all of the liens that you're buying are collateralized by the underlying real estate. Itself, right? Um, and so is it a, a solution, right, for cash flow, as in, hey, quit your job, take your retirement, go buy liens, and you can make the same, you know, monthly revenue? I would say no, definitely don't do that, because again, back to the— you don't know when you're going to get that redemption and paid back. So you might make it in interest, but you don't know when you're actually gonna have that cash, right? And so it's not a good strategy for the casual investor to be a replacement Right, for your daily income. It can be a good strategy, a low-risk, good strategy alongside other investments, right, where you can make a pretty decent return. And decent, right, is relative. I, I can confidently tell folks today, right, if you're looking to place even a few hundred thousand dollars, you can do that in mid, mid-teens, right? Doing that yourself, it's a pretty good return. Can you do that with tens of millions of dollars? No. Right. Because there becomes economies of scale issues and And now you can't just go buy those that are over the counter at a good rate in Florida. There's just not enough, right, to do that at that scale. You got to start actually attending auctions all over the place, which has a cost associated with it. And so if you're going to place tens of millions of dollars now, we're talking like 6%, 7%, 8% returns, right? Better than bank money, right? But not necessarily a, you know, retire quickly you know, avenue. But there are folks that have made it a career and they, they play what I'll call an arbitrage spread model, which is, is very good, right? If you've done well, where they borrow money right at, let's say, 4%, right? And they can buy liens at 7%, 8%, right? Then they're making a 3%, 4% spread between the two. And if done at scale, let's say $100 million, that's a pretty good payday, right? That, that is a replacement For your daily income if you want to get to that level. And the advantage of that is there's actually some banks that will lend in that mechanism, right? Again, not for $50,000, but they'll do it for, let's say, $4 or $5 million on up, right?

Mm-hmm.

And so, if you're looking to do it at scale, then you could potentially work with them on that front. So, it's not a replacement for stocks. It's not a replacement necessarily for gold, right? It is a good interest-bearing asset-backed investment, right? That can be a very good return, right, with very little risk. So you should— you can put some money into it. The other, I guess, sidetrack here, but the other, I'd say, cool aspect of, right, with folks that have a 401 or self-directed IRA, you can actually convert or what they call roll your 401 over into a self-directed IRA. And then purchase tax liens through that self-directed IRA as well. And so you can utilize your retirement and build it up over time as a casual investment as well, and not necessarily an active, like do it on a full-time basis. That's an avenue also, Alan.

Well, that's often, I think, the case with a lot of real estate things. It takes time to build portfolios and to build an investment that's going to replace an income.

I'd say the nice thing— sorry, I didn't mention this earlier, but the nice thing about tax liens is you don't have to have $1 million to start either, right? You can buy tax liens for less than $1,000. And so if you're looking to invest with something and if you don't have enough capital to do something else, right, you can start with this, right? Build it up over time, make way more than you would make letting it sit in a CD right now or bank account earning I think CDs are probably 4-ish, 5-ish percent, which is, I'd say, a recent historic high, right? You can put it in something that's going to earn double that, right? Or triple that, right? And that will allow that amount to build up a lot quicker.

Sure. Yeah. Well, when you think about calm and pressure-free wealth and not just numbers on a statement, but Your lived experience, what does that actually look like in your own life?

Oh, in my own life, I think the most important thing to me is enjoying what I'm doing, right? And I don't know if that's the right answer for everybody. But in my experience, if you enjoy what you're doing, you're going to not only Like, excited might be a little extreme, but, you know, actually enjoy getting up every morning and going to do what you're going to do. But you are going to be happy about doing it. So, you're going to actually excel at doing it, right? You're going to have a little more passion about learning how to do it a little bit better. And I say hone your craft, right?

Yeah.

And so, that's been the main driver for me. I'm not, and my wife, like our family is not one where we need to have private islands and gigantic yachts and all of those other things. And so, I mean, there's a level of wealth where some people need that in order to be happy. That's not necessarily where we sit. We just want to not necessarily have to worry about— You know, when the next bill is coming and how much do I got to pay, right? And, and so having that, that level of freedom is very important. And if you're able to do both, right, have that level of freedom and love what you're doing, then I think, you know, you've, you've, you're well on your way to having a successful, happy life. Yeah.

Well, thank you, Brian, for being with us. A really powerful conversation. Today, we explored what happens when engineering discipline meets investing, when systems thinking replaces speculation, and when calm, structured decision-making replaces financial noise. And we discussed how tax liens and tax deeds work, why stability often beats chasing the highest possible return, and how highly intelligent professionals sometimes apply the wrong mental models to their own portfolios. Most importantly, we examined what pressure-free wealth looks like in real life and how predictable income streams can create space, clarity, and long-term security. So if today's conversation resonated with you, here are your next steps. You can explore Tax Sale Resources, a comprehensive software platform that lists tax liens and tax deeds across the United States, all in one place. And complete with the data and insights needed to evaluate opportunities intelligently. And for those who prefer a more hands-off approach, Brian also operates a real estate-backed fund targeting a 16% annual return paid quarterly with a 2-year lock-in period. And that structure is designed for investors who want consistent income without operational complexity of sourcing and managing deals themselves. So Brian, where can they find you?

Well, I'd say there's really 2 avenues, right? If you're looking to, you know, buy tax liens yourself and want a place to get started, like I said, we have a ton of resources on our TaxSaleResources.com website. It's all free. You don't have to pay for any of that. The platform itself, right, is a great tool once you kind of know what you're doing. And, um, and, and it can enable you, right? So you can go back there, right, and subscribe if you want. But I think for now, right, anybody that's just learning about it, go there just to, you know, review the resources, listen to some of the interviews that I've done. Um, on the Mountain Earth Capital side, right? So if you're listening to all this and you're maybe going, huh, that sounds cool, but I don't want to do any of that work, I'd like to just place it with somebody. There are some funds in the industry. Mountain North Capital is one of those. You can go to mountainnorthcapital.com and, you know, I guess you can sign up to the data room. You can learn some more about the opportunity itself there. And if it's something you want to pursue, we'll end up speaking at that point as well.

Well, thank you, Brian. And before we close, I just want to remind all of our viewers and listeners, if you are a high-income professional who has built many meaningful income, but you're ready to structure your wealth more intelligently, then I invite you to access our gift, Beyond the Paycheck: The Financial Clarity Compass. And this is our private masterclass designed to help you to reposition capital from low-performing volatile allocations into secure high-yield appreciating assets that generate multiple streams of passive income. And you can access that at www.

go.stetaker.com/beyond-paycheck.

So your career has already proven your competence. Now it's time for your capital to prove it's disciplined. If you've gotten anything out of today's conversation, please take a moment to like, share, and subscribe so that it gets a broader reach and others can take advantage of it as well. So until next time, keep building wisely.

Thank you.

Keep investing consciously and keep riding towards meaningful impact.

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