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Supreme Court Rules 9-0 That 'Home Equity Theft' Is Theft Even When Your County Government Does It
Red State ^ | 05/26/2023 | streiff

Posted on 05/26/2023 6:51:01 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

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1 posted on 05/26/2023 6:51:01 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Does anyone know, can this be applied retroactively? This happened to my parents a few years back.


2 posted on 05/26/2023 6:54:03 PM PDT by fhayek
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To: Alberta's Child; SeekAndFind

bttt


3 posted on 05/26/2023 6:55:36 PM PDT by linMcHlp
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To: SeekAndFind

4 posted on 05/26/2023 6:56:00 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
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To: SeekAndFind

I’m at that place where I want to end policing as we know it. They have become the standing army the Founders warned us about.


5 posted on 05/26/2023 6:59:50 PM PDT by MeganC (There is nothing feminine about feminism. )
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To: SeekAndFind

Will the officials that did it be arrested now? Yeah, RIGHT!


6 posted on 05/26/2023 7:00:23 PM PDT by JJBookman (Democrats = Party of theives)
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To: fhayek
Does anyone know, can this be applied retroactively? This happened to my parents a few years back.

Probably depends on how long ago it happened.

It also depends how much. It does not make a lot of difference if you have to pay lawyers more to recover, than you recover...

7 posted on 05/26/2023 7:00:30 PM PDT by marktwain
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To: SeekAndFind
The excessive fines issue may be a huge thing when dealing with stupid zoning ordinances.

They often charge fines such as $250 a day demanding compliance on silly issues.

8 posted on 05/26/2023 7:01:57 PM PDT by marktwain
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To: SeekAndFind

That this has to go to SCOTUS is sick.

The legal system totally sucks.


9 posted on 05/26/2023 7:02:53 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: SeekAndFind

Mn. must be a scumbag Socialist State run by Marxist dems. I have been to Mn. several times and found the atmosphere of the people deplorable.


10 posted on 05/26/2023 7:05:18 PM PDT by chopperk
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To: fhayek

There may be a statute of limitations. You should consult one of the lawyers who represented Ms. Tyler.


11 posted on 05/26/2023 7:11:09 PM PDT by maro (MAGA!)
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To: SeekAndFind
Pacific Legal Foundation - case details

https://pacificlegal.org/case/mn_home_equity_theft/
EXCERPT:
"State law allows Minnesota counties to keep such windfalls at the expense of property owners like Geraldine. From 2014 to 2020, 1,200 Minnesotans lost their homes and all of the equity they had invested for debts that averaged 8% of the home’s value."
LINK for the "1,200 Minnesotans lost their homes"

https://pacificlegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/PLF_Home-Equity-Theft-Minnesota.pdf

FROM THAT PDF FILE:
"For example, the State of Minnesota often sells tax-forfeited properties to the City of Minneapolis for as little as $1. Even then, the State and localities retained over $11.6 million in excess of the taxes owed in 772 homes examined in our study where sales price data was available.[4]

The city then turned around and sold the properties to private investors-a gain not captured in the $11.6 million figure. Private investors then sold properties for market value-also getting a large cut of the homeowners’ savings."


12 posted on 05/26/2023 7:12:17 PM PDT by linMcHlp
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To: Paladin2; marktwain; Alberta's Child
Freeper Alberta's Child, April 26, 2023 [AC, thanks for your explanation]:
I just read some details of the Eighth Circuit Court’s opinion in favor of the municipal government. Their decision is based on a more nuanced but very concrete legal analysis than a simple foreclosure.

It seems that a government foreclosure process under Minnesota law is unique. There are many points during the foreclosure process when the property owner can intervene on his or her behalf to remedy their default - and they are even given an opportunity to pay off the debt under a 5 or 10 year period.

At one specific point in the process - after the debtor has refused to avail herself of any of these remedies - it ceases to be a “foreclosure” and effectively becomes a property abandonment process. The Minnesota statutes governing the abandonment process date back to the 1880s when it was apparently common for farmers to abandon their Minnesota farms and move west to the Dakota territories and settle on new land given to them under the Homestead Act. The property was considered abandoned because the Minnesota courts and government authorities had no recourse and no mechanism for even contacting these people.

In this case, the Federal courts simply ruled that the foreclosure/abandonment process was governed by Minnesota law. Importantly, the courts ruled that the sale of the condo was not a violation of the “Takings Clause” for a clear legal/technical reason - in that the debtor no longer had any ownership claim on the property after they passed the specific point in the Minnesota process where it went from a “foreclosure” to an “abandonment.”


13 posted on 05/26/2023 7:13:52 PM PDT by linMcHlp
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To: linMcHlp

The Legal System needs to be set up and biased on the side of the property owner. The Law could easily be written to favor the citizen over the State.

This current Minn. law is sick and needs to be reformed.

The Minn. Law is fascist.


14 posted on 05/26/2023 7:26:46 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: SeekAndFind
The narrative in this article and the court’s reasoning is confusing. And if some of these facts are correct as reported, then the plaintiff in the case may end up getting no money out of it at the end of the day anyway.

They reasoned that once the county confiscated her title, she no longer owned the property and was not entitled to anything. This left Tyler on the hook for a $50,000 mortgage and $12,000 in condo fees.

If Tyler no longer had a title to the property then I don’t see how she would have owed any money to the bank or to the condo association. The mortgage and the condo fees are secured by liens on the property, so if she no longer owns the property then the new owner (the government) has effectively taken on the responsibility for those two liabilities. And if these ARE still in place, then the $50,000 mortgage and the $12,000 in condo fees would be paid out of the proceeds of the sale when the government sold it.

Under these circumstances, I don’t see how Tyler gets even a penny for her efforts in the case.

15 posted on 05/26/2023 7:33:50 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("I've just pissed in my pants and nobody can do anything about it." -- Major Fambrough)
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To: Paladin2

See my reply 12, above.

I think that the flaw, is that lawyers for, or who are, real estate property developers, play a game with the old Minnesota laws pertaining to this type of matter; and either, the lawyers are participants along with greedy government bureaucrats, or the lawyers know how to “influence” (sometimes read: coerce) government bureaucrats, to force the shift from foreclosure status to abandonment status . . . and thereby the lawyers “do well” but do not “do good.”


16 posted on 05/26/2023 7:38:05 PM PDT by linMcHlp
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To: Paladin2
Who is the “property owner” in this case? In a condominium arrangement there are typically three parties that hold liens on the property: the government (to secure payment of taxes), the bank (to secure payment of the mortgage), and the condominium association (to secure payment of the condo fees). In my experience the condo association lien is subordinate to the mortgage and they are both subordinate to the tax obligation.

Based on the information reported in this article, it looks like the property was encumbered to the hilt and may have had negative equity after all the liens were satisfied. If that’s the case, then the plaintiff here really didn’t “own” anything.

17 posted on 05/26/2023 7:40:01 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("I've just pissed in my pants and nobody can do anything about it." -- Major Fambrough)
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To: linMcHlp

I think you figured out exactly what’s going on there.


18 posted on 05/26/2023 7:52:02 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("I've just pissed in my pants and nobody can do anything about it." -- Major Fambrough)
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To: Paladin2
Outlawing property taxes would be a good start.
19 posted on 05/26/2023 7:55:29 PM PDT by Major Matt Mason (To solve the Democrat problem, the RINO problem must first be solved.)
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To: Major Matt Mason

“Outlawing property taxes would be a good start.”

There’s a wealth tax/theft....


20 posted on 05/26/2023 8:03:28 PM PDT by Paladin2
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