From Aerospace Engineering to a Focus on Tax Deed Investing

Written by:

Steve Marcinuk

Date:

20 Oct 2025

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The journey from missile defense engineering to distressed real estate investing is uncommon, but for Brian Seidensticker, it has become a way to create meaningful impact in communities across the country.

Brian Seidensticker, founder and officer of Last Best Partners, found his calling in an unexpected way. After nearly a decade in aerospace engineering working on missile defense systems, he realized that, despite being busy and productive, his work felt repetitive and unfulfilling.

“I went on vacation for six weeks, came back, and prior to leaving, was very nervous about how much work I was missing,” Seidensticker recalls. “I came back to really, almost like I never skipped a beat. That was eye opening. I felt like I was doing a lot on a daily basis, but at the end of the day, I realized maybe I’m on the hamster wheel.”

This realization prompted his transition into real estate, starting with fix-and-flip properties in Montana. However, it was the challenging experience during the 2007-2008 market downturn that introduced him to what would become his specialty: tax deed investing.

Discovering Tax Deed Investing

When Seidensticker found himself underwater on a Montana property due to declining values, he received a notice about a potential tax lien certificate being placed on the property. This was followed by a surge of certified letters from potential investors, a requirement unique to Montana’s tax lien process.

“That’s what got me researching this whole tax lien investing concept, and lo and behold, there was a four and a half billion dollar niche space out there that I had never heard of, and everyone I talked to had never heard of,” he explains.

This discovery led to the creation of Tax Sale Resources, a data and analytics company focused on the tax lien and tax deed sector. By 2020, the business had evolved into Last Best Partners, a holding company that merged Tax Sale Resources with SDA Solutions, a provider of portfolio management tools for tax lien investors.

A Dual-Strategy Business

Today, Last Best Partners operates through two main divisions. The software side offers data analytics and portfolio management tools for tax deed investors. The fund side, Mount North Capital, works with local investors to scale their operations by providing both capital and market intelligence.

“Tax deed investing is very cash intensive. It’s usually a limiting factor for any mom and pop shop in the space,” Seidensticker notes. “We went about figuring out how to solve that problem and rolled out a product to enable them to grow.”

Mount North Capital’s model is clear: buy real estate at a discount through tax deed auctions and sell at higher prices. The competitive edge comes from Last Best Partners’ extensive data analytics, developed over 15 years of market research.

“The really unique thing that we have being in the data analytics side is we also know, over a long history, what stuff sells for and where it’s selling,” Seidensticker explains. “We know where you can get great deals and where you can’t get great deals.”

Changes in the Market

The tax deed investment landscape has changed significantly following the 2023 Supreme Court case Tyler v. Hennepin County, which ruled certain tax sale processes unconstitutional. While this created initial uncertainty, it has ultimately expanded opportunities for tax deed investors like Mount North Capital.

“There are states that never had that style of foreclosure auction on a regular basis that now do,” Seidensticker observes. “For us, in a weird way, we’ve seen growth in the potential pie over the last year, and we’ll continue to see that over the next couple of years as those states bring that new process online.”

The fund currently manages about $38 million in assets, having grown from an initial $1.5 million test concept, through a $5 million second placement, to its current iteration aiming for $100-150 million before reaching market capacity constraints.

Investment Approach and Returns

Mount North Capital primarily targets single-family residential properties but also works with partners on vacant land and some commercial or multi-family assets. The fund operates as a 506(c) offering, available to accredited investors with a $50,000 minimum investment.

The fund emphasizes cash flow, currently paying 16% annually, distributed quarterly (4% per quarter) on two-year notes. This structure attracts investors seeking regular income rather than long-term appreciation.

“Most of our investors are high net worth individuals that either have an IRA that they’re investing through, or a trust, or a few folks directly,” Seidensticker explains. “Anyone that falls in that accredited investor category with some liquidity and looking for fairly decent cash flow on a quarterly basis—it’s a good fit for them.”

Tackling Misconceptions

One of the major challenges for the tax deed investment sector is public perception. Seidensticker acknowledges that negative media coverage often overshadows the community improvements responsible tax deed investors bring.

“We really look at ourselves as moving into blighted areas and enabling folks that are taking really rough houses in really rough areas and turning them into, typically, the nicest house on the street,” he says. “If you ask everybody that’s a neighbor to that, they love the people doing that.”

The properties targeted by Mount North Capital are usually abandoned rather than occupied homes facing foreclosure. “The type of houses that are ending up in our wheelhouse are because somebody abandoned them, not that they were taken away,” Seidensticker clarifies.

Competitive Position

While local mom-and-pop investors represent competition at individual auctions, Seidensticker points out that many of these operators could become potential partners. The barrier to entry for institutional-scale tax deed investing remains high due to the specialized knowledge required.

“I spent close to 15 years gathering knowledge before we ever started doing what we’re doing,” he explains. “Most folks that try to enter the space with any sort of scale get frustrated with how much time and effort can be wasted on properties you never buy.”

The company’s proprietary data analytics help reduce inefficiency by identifying properties likely to result in successful acquisitions versus those that will likely be redeemed before auction.

Future Outlook

As economic uncertainty continues, Seidensticker sees potential tailwinds for distressed real estate investing, though he is careful not to hope for economic hardship.

“Distressed real estate tends to be countercyclical,” he notes. “A recession typically can bring tailwinds as far as more opportunities, less demand, better spreads.”

However, he recognizes the difficulty of predicting economic trends: “Are we in a recession? Are we not in a recession? How big is the recession going to be? The opinions are so wild, I think that’s just a testament of how much we just don’t know what’s going to happen over the next couple of years.”

Despite this uncertainty, Last Best Partners remains confident in its model, having operated successfully through what Seidensticker considers one of the toughest markets.

For investors seeking exposure to alternative real estate strategies, Mount North Capital offers an approach that combines specialized market knowledge, data-driven decision making, and a focus on community improvement through the rehabilitation of distressed properties. As the fund continues to scale toward its $100-150 million target, it demonstrates how expertise in a niche can create investment opportunities in overlooked market segments.