If you want to follow this path as it develops — I’ll write what I see.
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My savings account paid me less than a dollar last year. Not a bad month. The whole year. On $500 sitting there doing nothing.
I didn’t get angry. I just looked at the number for a long time.
That was the thread I pulled.
The first tax lien I ever bought cost $50. Over the counter. 18% interest rate, set by the state of Florida.
It redeemed in three months. I made $2.25.
That sounds like nothing. But $2.25 on $50 in 90 days — while my bank was giving me less than $1 on $500 in 365 — was enough to make me stop and ask:
What did I actually buy?
Most people who find tax liens stop at the rate. 18% sounds like the answer. It isn’t.
Three investors can hold the same 18% lien. Same certificate. Same rate. Three completely different outcomes.
One redeems in two months — capital back fast. One redeems in eleven — closer to what the rate suggests. One doesn’t redeem at all — and ends up in a tax deed process that has nothing to do with interest rates.
The rate was the same. The outcome wasn’t.
That’s the part you don’t see from the outside. You think you’re evaluating a number. You’re not.
You’re stepping into a system where time, strategy, and luck turn the same rate into entirely different experiences.
I’ve been inside Florida auctions sitting next to family offices and institutional buyers. Everyone in the room is playing a different game on the same property — and not everyone has the same resources going in.
That’s not a warning. It’s just what it actually feels like from inside it.
Florida counties start issuing again in the next few months.
I’ll be there. But I won’t be looking at the rate the same way.
I’ll be looking at the game behind it. Because the rate?
That’s just the price of admission.
If you want to follow this path as it develops — I’ll write what I see.
Subscribe below.