Can I sell a house with liens, back taxes or code violations?

Usually, yes

Liens and code violations are not the deal-killers people assume they are, and the two are handled differently. Liens, back taxes and anything else that has to be cleared to convey title are paid out of the sale proceeds at closing. An open code violation is usually not a payoff at all: we take the house with the violation and deal with the city after we own it.

What we do first is research the issues, then include the solutions in our offer. That way the offer you are reading already accounts for the lien, the violation, and whatever it takes to clear them, rather than becoming an unpleasant surprise a week before closing.

The kinds of things we deal with

Code enforcement notices on a vacant or deteriorating property. Unpaid property taxes, which keep accruing on an empty house, and which a county can eventually foreclose on if they go unpaid too long. Liens recorded against the property.

Vacant homes accumulate this kind of thing quietly. Mail piles up, the lawn grows, the city takes an interest, and the letters go to an address nobody is checking. If that is your situation, you are not the first person to discover it late. Calling the county tax office early is worth doing regardless of who you end up selling to, just so you know what is actually owed.

What happens to the payoff

Anything that has to be paid to convey clear title comes out of the purchase price at closing, the same way a mortgage payoff does. You will see it in writing before you sign: what we are paying, what goes to the mortgage, what goes to liens, and what goes to you.

The purchase price does not change. A lien found during the title search is paid out of the price at closing rather than handled by changing the number. Be clear about what that does and does not mean, though: if the title search turns up a lien you did not know about, it still has to be paid from your proceeds, and we will show you the new numbers the day we learn of it.

The exception worth naming

If the liens exceed what the house is worth, the arithmetic can stop working, the same way it does when a mortgage is underwater. We will tell you that plainly instead of pretending otherwise, and where a different path is better we will point you toward it.

You do not need to resolve anything before calling. Bring what you know, even if it is just a stack of letters you have not opened.

Read the as-is guide, or send us the address and we will research the rest.