Property Tax Home For Sale – The Sale Of Property Tax Defaults

If, for whatever reason you do not pay the property tax on a land, lot, home, building, or condo unit that you own, it will then wind of on a list of tax defaulted properties, and then you see it advertised on the Internet or a publication as ‘Property Tax Home for Sale’. The local government or the municipality prepares the list of all the property owners who did not pay their property taxes in time and sends property tax notices to the ‘defaulting’ property owners.. This is the first step of selling a home on sale for defaulting on property tax.

Conducted about once a year, these defaulted properties qualify to go up for sale at auction. The properties are advertised before the auction so that interested parties may see the properties (On paper as well as physically) and then decide which property they desire to buy. Meanwhile, up to the date of the auction the property owner is given time to pay the property taxes however by this point late fees and interest charges have been added to what is owed on the property. If the property taxes are not paid in full before the stipulated time, his property automatically qualifies for the Sale.

I have attended couple of these Property Tax Hone auctions. My experience with them is that if you have done your research on the property which you wish to buy, you can come out of the auction, smiling. These auctions allow the bidders to get ownerships of the ‘defaulting’ properties at amazing prices. This is one of the main reasons why people view property taxes as a way of benefiting from taxes.

Even after a property is sold in the auction, the previous property owner gets one year to redeem the property. If he wishes to get the property back a penalty amount will have to be paid to the new owner. In case the previous owner fails to do so, the title of the property is permanently transferred to the new owner.

Statistics have revealed that 70% of tax defaults on non-moveable items are property tax defaults. That translates to a lot of American property owners not obeying the law when it comes to paying property taxes. In some cases, the reasons for not paying the taxes may be genuine. But in most of them, it is just the lackadaisical attitude of the property owner that the property taxes do not get paid in time.

At the end of the day, if someone loses, someone gains. By Property Tax Home for Sale, the previous property owner loses his property and the new property owner who has claimed ownership of the property through the auction gains.

Property Tax