The American Dream: Proudly owning a house has change into the American Nightmare for a rising variety of folks throughout the nation.
Think about proudly owning your property free and clear, after many years of onerous work and trustworthy funds, solely to lose it over a $40 tax lien. Properly that’s precisely what’s taking place to a rising variety of Individuals who’ve had their houses stolen from them, after governments across the nation bought miniscule tax liens and allowed grasping buyers to then seize the houses.
Imagine it or not, you can be prone to dropping your property over even minute quantities of unpaid property taxes. Earlier this week, the Washington Submit coated the story of a 76-year-old Marine Veteran who misplaced his $197,000 residence over a $134 property tax debt.
All of it occurred as a result of governments across the nation have been putting liens on properties when residence house owners fail to pay their property tax payments. The houses are then bought to grasping buyers who foreclose on the houses, raking in income that generally add as much as tons of of hundreds of {dollars}.
The system permits buyers to take these tiny money owed after which add authorized charges and fines which are so excessive the house proprietor can now not afford to pay the unique debt. A $100 delinquency, just like the one Marine Veteran Bennie Coleman had, can then skyrocket to $4,999 — in some instances far more.
Even worse, as in Coleman’s case, the buyers then take every little thing. Not solely are they allowed to gather on the debt and all of the phony charges, however they’re allowed to maintain every little thing once they promote the home. Meaning an investor who purchases a $100 tax lien from the federal government can then flip round and foreclose on a house that’s value 10, 100, even 10,000 occasions what the unique lien was value.
Whereas these native governments would really like you to imagine these individuals are tax cheats, a ten month investigation by the put up revealed that in Washington D.C. alone, one-third of the practically 200 owners who misplaced their properties in recent times had liens of lower than $1,000. One particular person highlighted within the investigation had a $287 tax lien that bought it lower than eight weeks for $129,000.
Much more troubling, was the investigation discovered over 1,900 tax liens that had been bought to those buyers by mistake. The house house owners owed nothing, but D.C. bought these misguided tax liens permitting buyers to foreclose on houses that owed nothing.
In a single case a 64-year-old girl spent two years combating to avoid wasting her residence after she was mistakenly charged $8.61 in curiosity. Sadly most people who face this nightmare merely surrender. Confronted with enormous authorized payments, and a debt that grows by the day, a lot of them are pressured to show over their houses due to a system that enables these buyers to mainly steal their houses.
The American Nightmare
During the last couple of years now we have coated story after story highlighting how residence possession has change into a sham on this nation. From large firms utilizing eminent area to steal folks’s houses, to the federal authorities utilizing the Division of Homeland Safety and the EPA to muscle folks off their land, it appears owners are underneath assault from each course.
We’ve warned folks debt is without doubt one of the greatest threats they face, and as we see in case after case it’s being now getting used to rob folks of their houses. Keep in mind, in a majority of those instances these individuals are not useless beats who refuse to pay their payments. They’re common Individuals who’re being screwed by a system that provides them no approach out.
