😱 In YOUR OPINION - Is this home equity theft = legalized government theft?

[Anonymous]

Read comments and/or comment.

(1) DO YOU AGREE/DISAGREE? 🤔 By keeping the excess, the county had unconstitutionally taken her property.

(2) Have YOU (or someone you know) experienced this? 🤔

TITLE OF ARTICLE: Grandma didn't pay taxes. Now her house is focus of property rights test case : NPR.

🗣 Nina Totenberg 4/26/23.

DO YOU AGREE/DISAGREE? 🤔

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[GailL1 · Accepted solution]

Grandma isn’t getting a dime out of this.  If she had (or somebody working on her behalf had )taken advantage of one of the MANY route she had to fix this before it got top this point, things may have turned out a bit better for her - but not by much.  She owed MORE in mortgage and in HOA fees than whatever the jurisdiction sold it for at auction for her tax debt and administration fees.

Per the articles -

The county doesn't make a profit," its lawyer Rebecca Holschuh says. "The county doesn't even break even through its administration of the tax forfeiture laws."

Holschuh notes that there are a variety of ways that homeowners can avoid forfeiture. The state has a payment plan that allows people to pay what they owe over a 10-year period. And for seniors like Tyler, there's a program allowing them to pay no more than 3% of their annual income.

Holschuh says that the county really would rather not be a default realtor. It doesn't want abandoned homes, which bring down property values, and it doesn't want to spend money to make a property sellable.

"And really, if somebody wants to pull their equity out of property, the best way for them to do that is to sell the property themselves," Holschuh said.

She notes that's why the state gives homeowners five years before forfeiture — to refinance their homes and pay back taxes, enter into a tax payment plan, or sell the home and reap the profit. Indeed, the county asserts that Tyler had no equity in the home at the time of the forfeiture because she owed $48,000 on her mortgage and more than $11,000 in homeowner's association fees, debts that were canceled under state law when the state declared her home forfeited for taxes.

"This is really a remedy of last resort in which the title transfers to the state by default," Holschuh said. 

You do not just walk away from real estate which one owns, wants to keep for perhaps a profit motive - what do you want to bet she never removed her HOMESTEAD exemption from the property - which she should have since she was no longer living there - thus HIGHER property taxes.

Move on. . . . .  . Grandma and her family, if she has one -