CNN – Hedge fund executives who descended on Miami last month for a conference on unpaid property taxes were treated to waterfront cruises of estates owned by Madonna, Shaquille O’Neal, and Elizabeth Taylor. But unlike those celebrity residences, the houses the profit-chasing investors were hunting at the gathering have a prosaic facade: tax liens.
Far from the mansions of Greenwich, Conn., houses owned by homeowners struggling with delinquent property-tax bills are sparking a gold rush by the elite money pools. Leading the recent lien-buying surge is Fortress Investment Group, the $53 billion alternative investments company now working with former executives who drove J.P. Morgan’s prior rush into the business from 2008 through mid-2011.
