Supreme Court rules in favor of 94-year-old woman who got nothing when county took her condo

I cant STAND things like this.
Next up do cash seizure when there are no criminal charges.

In states like where I live you never truly own a home because you must pay the property tax extortion or else you get the boot.

but you might also get the difference left over when it is sold and the taxes are deducted.

Probably tax reaks unconstitutional, and may one day be struck down.

Tax for us to make up for it.

They say, either no taxes or no jobs.

We could use sales taxes, but then everyone whines about it being "regressive"
Local income taxes are too easy to avoid.
There are NO states that dont have property taxes.

Just saying it might be unconstitutional.

There are other ways to get money.

15,000-2,300 = 12,700 in penalties and interest.

"Minnesota is among roughly a dozen states and the District of Columbia that allow local jurisdictions to keep the excess money, according to the Pacific Legal Foundation, a not-for-profit public interest law firm focused on property rights that represented Tyler at the Supreme Court.

The other states are: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and South Dakota, the group said."

Unjust enrichment, anyone?

My state, land of the stupid, at least gets this right (tax certificates and tax deeds sales). Do better.

The for-profit companies go after delinquent taxpayers and recover lost revenue.

Investors can collect big % interest from homeowners whose titles were sold off.

If those property owners fail to pay back the debt, investors can foreclose.

The liens might be for property taxes but can also be for unpaid water or sewer bills (much smaller amounts).

The for profit companies buying the tax liens do it because they are making money.

$2,300 in unpaid taxes, plus interest and penalties becomes a $15,000 bill.

It seems excessive. But part of that is because the home's value was so low.

Counties incur significant expense in the process of foreclosing on and auctioning off these properties. The delinquent taxpayer should bear those expenses - as well as a proportional sharing of the costs of running the department (or subcontracting it out).

The great part of this ruling isn't just that Geraldine Tyler (and others like her) will get what was stolen from them... it's that the counties will lose the incentive to do this in the first place (possibly encouraging them to help struggling homeowners stay in their homes).

I suspect that the ruling will cause a bunch of counties to start getting claims for refunds of what was stolen. I wonder whether there will be a scorecard of the worst offenders.

It still costs taxpayers more to demolish, repair, pay for staff, etc. than they take for these situations. If they can't do this now, they will need to find a way to cover costs of taking care of neglected properties like this. She could have sold but she didn't. Other situations often require expensive demolition and removal of debris and the proceeds for selling properties cover the cost.

This was the right decision and this precedent may protect others in the future but Ms. Tyler won't benefit from it, in all likelihood.

In addition to the $15,000 that she owed for back taxes, it appears that she also had a $49,000 mortgage and owed $12,000 in unpaid HOA fees, which easily exceeded the market value of her property. That is why Hennipin County argued that she effectively abandoned the property when she walked away from it and stopped paying those outstanding debts.

I suspect that most of the time that a property is taken over for back taxes, the owner has little or no equity in the property, which is why they don't simply sell it, pay off their debts and keep any equity. It's a major pain for the government to have to take over an abandoned property and there is significant expense involved. In this case, the mortgage holder decided to write off the mortgage instead of foreclosing, since they were unlikely to recoup enough of their investment to make it worth their while, so it went to the County for back taxes.

While I think it's a good thing that the owner would get any equity over and above what the County is able to sell the property for, less the value of any costs incurred by the County to do so, I don't know that it's the Counties job to make any other lien holders whole.

The mortgage holder won't let you sell it. Counties should be able to do an accounting of their costs associated with prep and selling of the property and recover that.

Was Pro Bono