The local paper had the insert today with this list. Is this what their talking about on those late night infomericals where they show people who bought property for "pennies on the dollar"
Yes, but beware. I can't speak to IL law, but I'm very familiar with FL law. In Florida, you are not buying the property; you are buying the debt. You pay the overdue tax bill, plus penalties, interest and fees. The property tax collector then places a lien on the property in the amount you paid. If and when the property owner pays the tax bill, the money is passed on to you--including interest in the amount specified in the lien, where FL has a statutory minimum of 5% of the unpaid tax.
In short, you pay $100 to clear the tax debt. Eventually the property owner gets around to paying, and they pay at least $105, all of which is passed on to you.
If the bill isn't paid within two years, you do not get the property. As a lien-holder, you can only force a sheriff's sale, and after the sale you only get the money you have coming to you. You can of course bid in the sheriff's sale, but there you have no advantage over any other bidder. The bad news is: you must pay off all lien-holders other than yourself when filing for a sale, in effect making yourself the holder of all outstanding liens; and if the sale price doesn't cover your liens, you eat the loss.
Generally speaking your strategy shouldn't be to try and accumulate the property; it's a risky game. The ideal scenario is to find a millionaire who hasn't paid the $100K tax bill on his $20M house, and buy the lien. Within a few weeks he'll get around to paying, and you pocket $5K. He certainly isn't going to let the house go, so you'll certainly get your money. The only catch is that in Florida, competition is quite fierce for those liens, so you well might not win any of them. If you have some cash you can spare, it's worth a shot.
--Len.