If you purchase a property that is auctioned for failure to pay back taxes are you liable for any mortgages ?
or other liens existing on the property ?
Tags: are you liable for back taxes when you buy a house?, auctioned, failure, liable, Mortgages, Property, purchase, Taxes
You are liable for the taxes – not previous mortages.
you could be held liable. The liens stay on the property until they are paid, so if you buy a property with liens against it, you must pay the debts to get the liens removed. Typically the sale cannot legally be processed until all existing liens are settled. You can’t be held liable for a previous mortgage unless the deal is that you are taking over the mortgage, but the bank that holds the mortgage can block the sale of the house if the mortgage isn’t paid off.
The best thing to do is to protect yourself by having a qualified title company check the property, then get title insurance before you buy it.
if you receive a tax deed from the County, then the deed will be in your name, but the title isn’t necessarily clean. The liens and mortgages attach to the real estate, and will have to be paid before you could ever re-sell the property or get a loan on the property. After a passage of time, some liens and mortgages will finally drop off. If the mortgages haven’t been paid, usually the mortgage company would foreclose on the property. If so, you would probably get back the tax money you spent, but nothing else.