No Risk Investor at www.noriskinvestor.com is a program that promises people between 16% -50% return on their investments, in addition to the potential to buy property for pennies on the dollar with 7 days of signing up for their program.
No Risk Investor is a website that claims to teach you all about investing in Tax Lien Certificates and Tax Deeds. The simplest explanation of these is that a homeowner who fails to pay their property taxes has a lien put their property by the county they live in. But, since the county cannot afford to function without payment of property taxes, they sell these liens at auctions.
If you purchase a lien, you are paying the back taxes owed on that property. The owner of the property, however, must still pay these taxes by law. If the owner does successfully pay these back taxes, you get your money back and in addition you earn interest paid to you by the state government as a benefit to buying the lien in the first place.
If the owner of the property cannot and does not pay their back taxes, however, the property can be foreclosed on at which time the title of the property will either transfer to the lien holder or will be sold at auction with the lien holder being given the right of first bid.
The No Risk Investor sales page says you have 10 days free unlimited access to their site to see the opportunities and resources they offer yourself. In addition, they send you the Quick Start Guide, which is more introductory information in DVD form. If, at the end of 10 days, you do not cancel your membership, you will be charge $197 for a year’s subscription to the website.
So is No Risk Investor a Scam?
Well, the process being promoted by No Risk Investor, investing in Tax Lien Certificates and Tax Deeds, is a very real and legitimate method of real estate investment. However, like most businesses trying to turn a profit, they are not completely honest in their depiction of this opportunity.
First of all, No Risk Investor is essentially charging you $197 for information you can get for free. If you want “updated lists” Tax Lien properties, you simply call the county and ask them for a list of properties with liens. The county is the one who benefits from you buying the lien, and the provide this info for free.
As for teaching you the best methods of buying these liens, it seems a little hard to believe that their information is worth $197 when you can find tons of information online for free.
Also, No Risk Investor says you are guaranteed by the government to earn at least 16%-50% interest on your investment. While it is true that the interest you earn is guaranteed by the individual state governments, the 16%-50% interest quoted by No Risk Investor is actually the maximum amount of interest you are guaranteed to earn, not the minimum like No Risk Investor claims.
Since the Tax Liens and Deeds are sold at auction, the auction begins with bidders optioning the property at the highest interest rate, and the auctioneer lowers the interest rate in increments. The bidder who is willing to accept the lowest interest rate on their investment is the one who wins the Tax Lien Certificate. So if the maximum interest rate allowed by the state is 16%, it’s not likely you will actually be paid 16% like No Risk Investor claims.
Also, they guarantee that you will be able to buy a property for pennies on the dollar within 7 days. There is no way they can actually guarantee this to you. The truth is that if the owner defaults on his tax lien, you as the lien holder have to initiate foreclosure on the owner, and you must pay all foreclosure costs. The foreclosure process cannot be initiated and finalized within 7 days, and the property cannot be available to purchase until the original owner is officially foreclosed on.
Finally, if you read the Terms & Conditions of No Risk Investor, you’ll see some pretty big disparities in their billing process from what they claim on their sales page. The sales page says after a 10 day trial you’ll be charged $197 for one year’s unlimited access. The Terms & Conditions says that you are only given a 7 day trial, after which you’ll be charged $99 for 30 days and entered into a monthly subscription payment program – the monthly subscription amount isn’t clarified anywhere.
They also say that you will be given 30 days to cancel your subscription and receive a refund of that month’s subscription fee, but only if you pack up your Quick Start Guide and return it to them in its original condition.
The fact that their contractual Terms & Conditions are so different than what they post on their sales page is definitely a bad sign, and since they are already asking you to pay them lots of money for basically free information, it seems to me that you’d be better off staying away.
Thanks!