Very true, you do have to check out the state laws before you attempt any of the overage strategies. Joe wasn’t the only one sued by the state of Washington, it’s just that he refused to cave in like everyone else because he had done nothing wrong, but it cost him tons of money to fight the state. Rick lets you know which states are suitable and which ones aren’t but just like with tax lien investing, states change their laws all of the time. Now that many states are in dire financial straights they are not going to like it when you collect money that would otherwise be taken by them.

To clarify – the county would make some half-baked attempt to contact the owner that would not actually reach the owner. A big part of the overages game is doing the research (eg. skip-tracing, etc…) to find people. As a rule govt agencies don’t bother doing this. (and are even less likely to do so when the mail they want to tell you that they owe you money.)

I have not invested via overages but I recommend that anyone interested in doing this thoroughly investigate their state laws regarding this.

My understanding is that in some states it is not allowed, in others it is regulated and subject to severe consequences for violations, and in others it is fine to do. So make sure that you understand what the rules are in the state where you operate.

Keep in mind that often the government that holds the funds has two (conflicting) interests:
1. Protect people from ‘predators’ out to take money that was due to the people (that’s how they see it; especially if the amount charged is high or if you market with anything that is misleading)
2. Hope that people will never collect their overages – the local governments typically benefit from the interest that accrues on that money and often the money eschews to them if it is unclaimed for long enough. They have a nice game going and don’t want people poaching on ‘their’ money.

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There is a very interesting blog by Joe Kaiser about his experiences being sued in WA due to his (very active, big enough to be considered a ‘threat’ to the powers that be) overage investing in Washington state:
http://www.pushedtoshove.com/start-here/
In brief, he got pulled into a very expensive, very distracting lawsuit.

Joe was doing a different sort of overage play; buying properties from owners that were about to go to tax sale, letting them go to sale, and then collecting any overages that are due to the owner when the sale was more then the taxes owed. If he had not bought the properties and the owner had not paid the taxes then the overage would have been due to the owner but would frequently not be collected because the owner would not be contacted or would not read the mail informing them that there was an overage due to them.

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