Your Real Estate Taxes And A Real Estate Tax Auction
If you fail to pay your real estate taxes when they are due and continue to avoid paying them, you stand a good chance of accumulating penalties and interest. After a given amount of time, the county office can place a lien on your real estate. If you continue to avoid paying the real estate taxes, you house can succumb to the auction block. This can be done even if you owe an outstanding mortgage on the house. You or someone else is going to have to pay the outstanding balance owed on the real estate taxes. It is always best to pay the taxes, but if you do not, an auction can take place.
How the auction works is the county decides you have had ample time to pay the real estate taxes and you have made no effort to do so. They will then notify any lenders of intent to auction your real estate to recoup the taxes monies owed. Once the process starts, you still have time to save your real estate before the day of the auction. If you have the resources, you can apply monies to the delinquent real estate taxes and have your real estate taken off the auction block.
Once your real estate is deemed delinquent in real estate taxes, the county will add this data into the file with other real estate that are going up for auction as well. Once this procedure starts, there is only one way to stop it, you have to pay the taxes and have it taken off the list. You will have to pay the penalties and any interest that has accumulated over the years. When you have a receipt stating payment has been made, your real estate is then safe from auction and you retain ownership.
If you do not pay the real estate taxes, the auction will go as planned. individuals sign up to participate in a real estate auction and are allowed to view data about the real estate before bidding starts. Many bidders will search the title to see if there are any other lien holders on the real estate in question. Even if you are a mortgage holder, your real estate can be auctioned off. The legalities of a mortgage are more intense then the auction itself. The county will put a minimum limit requirement on the real estate to recoup as much of the tax owed as possible and allow bidders to bid accordingly. Once some wins the bid, you have a new situation to handle.
Chances are, the winning bidder has searched the title and now knows who the mortgage lender is and where to reach them. The winning bidder does have a stake in the real estate and now it is a matter of obtaining the real estate from you as the owner in a legal sense. This is procedure is going to be lengthy and costly in some cases. You are wise to contact a real estate tax attorney before you let this matter get this far, because you will have more issues now than you had before with just owing real estate taxes.