I found a picture of that "investor":
Posted on 12/28/2024 9:25:52 AM PST by george76
A Nebraska man is getting title to his home back, years after losing it over a $588 tax debt
....
Kevin Fair of Scottsbluff has been involved in a legal dispute since 2018, when he lost title to the home he had owned for nearly three decades for failing to pay $588 in overdue property taxes. Scotts Bluff County sold the lien to a private investor, as allowed by Nebraska law at the time.
When Fair couldn't repay the money along with interest and fees, the title went to the investor, though Fair was allowed to stay in the home while the legal dispute played out.
The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled against Fair in 2022, but a year later, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state court to reconsider. In August, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that Fair should retain title to the house.
Fair's appellate law firm, Pacific Legal Foundation, said Fair and the investor have amicably resolved their dispute, ending the legal battle.
The case confirmed that home equity “is protected by the Constitution
...
Fair and his wife, Terry, had already paid off the mortgage for their home in Scottsbluff, a town of 14,300 people in far western Nebraska, by the early 2010s. But in 2013, Terry was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and Kevin quit his job to care for her. The couple fell behind on their property taxes, owing $588.
The county placed a lien on the home and listed the delinquency in the newspaper. In 2015, the county sold the tax lien to the private investor, which paid the home's taxes for three years.
When the investor called for the Fairs to pay the accrued $5,268 in taxes, interest and fees, they couldn't. Scotts Bluff County turned the title and equity over to the investor in 2018.
Kevin Fair's lawsuit contended that while the state should be allowed to collect its debt, it should not be allowed to seize the home or the equity in it above the debt amount — $54,000 in this case.
The court victory is bittersweet for Kevin Fair. His wife died in 2019, and he suffered a stroke last month. Martin said he'll need a ramp built at the home to accommodate him
...
Nebraska changed its law in 2023 so that homeowners are no longer at risk of losing their equity over unpaid property taxes.
Too bad someone didn't make a GoFundMe/GiveSendGo page for him. He would have probably made the money.
This is the sort of bloated, bureaucratic, unaccountable government our forefathers went to war against.
I’ve had the IRS threatening my business for a year, and charging interest, because they claim we missed a tax payment. It was their fault, as they made a mistake recording one of our quarterly payments.
Our accountant has spent at total of at least 20 hours on the phone with them. Their phone-agents will admit the mistake, but it never gets fixed.
Seems like there should be something in place that allows seniors to postpone paying property tax until they sell the or improve home or pass away.
Even a special option on the title.
I hate seniors losing their homes!
I can’t figure out from the story how $5,268 in taxes turns into $54,000.
What the hell?
1. Original tax debt: $588
2. Then accrued taxes, interest and fees: $5,268
3. Final debt amount: $54,000
It's still outrageous that a man could lose his home, but the article implies it's only over $588.
This is our ‘government’ in action. As a taxpaying working stiff peon, this kind of thing makes me feel like... well like... we’re being sucked dry under threat of imprisonment or something. But that couldn’t be. I mean, this is the United States of America, so this could absolutely NOT be the case.
I had a similar problem with a child’s ssn number being recorded wrongly in their system and subsequently denying yhe deduction for said child and saying we owed more taxes. No matter how many times I sent copies of the birth cert and ssn card, they couldn’t wouldn’t fix the error. They owed us thousands while claiming we owed them thousands. It went on for 5 years. Then they started to threaten seizing our bank accounts.
Finally contacted our senator and it was fixed and got our refunds+interest in a week.
They would admit the error on the phone but nobody in phone support had the power or authority to make system file changes and whoever got the written responses was obviously throwing them away.
It was effing ridiculous.
I know a guy (an affected Vietnam veteran, if you get my drift) who lost his riverside home due to unpaid taxes. One day I stopped by his place to say hello, and he was gone.
The county foreclosed. And a relative of a county official ended up with the property. Funny how that works out.
He who had the gold, makes the rules.
- The Wizard of Id
The bloated government has too many different desks/systems the paperwork/electronic data gets shuffled through.
I recently got a new Medicare card in the mail with a new Medicare number. The old number was stolen in a hack on a medical provider’s system and used in a fraudulent claim.
I thought I should provide my new number to my insurance company for my Medicare Supplemental G policy. They tried putting it in but it kept registering “invalid number”. I called Medicare to get an additional card sent to me so I could show the insurer the new number was valid. The Medicare person assisting me could not send out the additional card. HER SYSTEM was saying the number was invalid.
Then she admitted, that although Medicare did issue the new number and send me the new card, it could take up to 30 days for the new number to register throughtout their systems!!!!!!
I believe the 54,000 is the equity above and beyond what’s owed on taxes and interest.
You see what happens is suppose you’re home is seized for $5,000 in taxes and interest but the equity in your home is $54,000. What governments have been doing is seizing the home and selling it for market value and then pocketing all the equity above and beyond what is owed for taxes. So in this case the government would make $49,000 AFTER getting paid its taxes and interest. I’m not sure how it works when they sell the house to the investor for just the taxes.
This is going on all over the country, local governments love making back 10 times what they are owed. There are some lawsuits that are trying to stop this. I don’t know whether they’re going anywhere
State legislatures could easily fix this.
Just create a special type of lien (no property seizure allowed) for owner occupied homes with overdue property taxes. Investor or absentee home owners would not be protected.
It would remain on the property until the taxes (and penalties, including interest) were paid or the owner died. The home could not be sold until the lien was satisfied.
Win win for all involved.
I found a picture of that "investor":
But they had paid off their mortgage, so their equity was the current market value. Even in the most affordable markets in the country and a modest home, they would have had $250,000 equity or more.
Arizona has this sort of “Tax Lien” system. In almost all cases, when the home is in danger of being foreclosed on, the owners come up with the money. The banks would only bid on residential property tax liens because of this. They hated actually taking possession of property.
Most of the time, people who end up with the property are able to foreclose because the owners abandoned the property.
I spent some time in Hyder, Alaska. They do not have property taxes. It is full of abandoned property where it is nearly impossible to get title, because the path to show a property is abandoned is onerous.
I changed my mind about property taxes after that. Some mechanism is needed to move title from abandoned property to productive owners.
In Michigan they can beat that. There was a guy who was renting out his house and somehow underpaid his property tax by $8 one year (no, I did not miss any zeros). After a couple of years the state declared him delinquent and took the home.
https://mises.org/mises-daily/marxism-lives
Plank #1 has been accomplished through property taxes. When property taxes are instituted, ownership of the property is transferred to the state. If you don't pay your property tax, AKA rent, they come with guns and take your property from you.
A close friend ended up going to tax court because one of the genius tax examiners insisted she made an error in her IRA roll over. She refused to pay the penalty and took it to court and won.
The examiner was either mistaken (incompetent) or hoped to squeeze the money out of her to stop the process (corrupt). Either way it stinks on ice.
They could simply put a lien on the house, so when it finally sells the taxes are collected. I think other states do it this way.
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