Home › Forums › Closed Forums › Buying and Selling RE › Property bought at a Trustee Sale several months ago
- This topic has 11 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 9 months ago by monticello67.
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January 18, 2012 at 1:25 AM #19431January 18, 2012 at 6:26 AM #736191SD RealtorParticipant
First the advice.
Yes you are liable for the taxes and any other liens that you find out about. Pay it and pay all the other liens. The preliminary title report also should have any other liens on it. If you cannot figure out how to read the report then hire a title officer to help you out. Call any reliable title company to do this. Pay them to run generate a new preliminary title report and help you understand it.
Now the scolding.
How anyone can go to a trustee sale and not have a full review of a title report is pretty much incomprehensible. What has happened to you should be a lessen to everyone that buying a home from trustee sale is big boy stuff. It is not hard, anyone can do it, but without taking the proper precautions and doing it the right way you can get burned. The first and most very basic of steps is to have good title connections so that you can get title information on the subject property. There are several other steps to take as well.
Hopefully this is the only thing that you will have to deal with. If you plan to keep going to trustee sales please take some time and spend some money to research the properties so you don’t get burned.
January 18, 2012 at 9:34 AM #736213UCGalParticipantSince Monticello67 is a new user it might be useful for him to know that SD Realtor and his partners purchased several homes at trustee sale. He knows what he’s talking about.
Trustee sales offer an opportunity to purchase properties at discount rates for all cash. That said – you need to proceed with caution. I’ve heard stories of naive buyers purchasing at a foreclosure of the 2nd trust deed… and still having to make the first trust deed whole. It requires a lot of due diligence. I followed the trustee auctions for several zip codes for almost 2 years… But never pulled the trigger.
January 18, 2012 at 2:26 PM #736269monticello67ParticipantI now have a copy of the “Preliminary Title” they calim was available on the auction.com website the night before the auction. My husband says he actually approached the Title company while I was signing us in the day of the auction and was shown the Prelim Title at the time. The title presented to him then is different from what we see now… it did not show the property tax lien that we are seeing now. What should we do then?
Another question: Now that I see the Prelim Title forwarded to me yesterday by the Trustee, how can I tell if I bought from the second or first mortgage? Sorry, I AM NEW to all this. I would appreciate your enlightenment.
January 18, 2012 at 2:28 PM #736271monticello67ParticipantI now have a copy of the “Preliminary Title” they calim was available on the auction.com website the night before the auction. My husband says he actually approached the Title company while I was signing us in the day of the auction and was shown the Prelim Title at the time. The title presented to him then is different from what we see now… it did not show the property tax lien that we are seeing now. What should we do then?
Another question: Now that I see the Prelim Title forwarded to me yesterday by the Trustee, how can I tell if I bought from the second or first mortgage? Sorry, I AM NEW to all this. I would appreciate your enlightenment.
January 18, 2012 at 2:31 PM #736270monticello67ParticipantI now have a copy of the “Preliminary Title” they calim was available on the auction.com website the night before the auction. My husband says he actually approached the Title company while I was signing us in the day of the auction and was shown the Prelim Title at the time. The title presented to him then is different from what we see now… it did not show the property tax lien that we are seeing now. What should we do then?
Another question: Now that I see the Prelim Title forwarded to me yesterday by the Trustee, how can I tell if I bought from the ” second or first trust deed”? Sorry, I AM NEW to all this. I would appreciate your enlightenment.
January 18, 2012 at 2:52 PM #736272UCGalParticipantJust an FYI on property taxes and liens.
Many are public record and viewable from internet databases.
For property taxes – if you know the parcel # (apn #) you can look up any property and see if it is in property tax default, whether taxes have been paid for the current year, etc.
https://www.sdctreastax.com/ebpp3/%28j4bfpty1bhwiyfbnuyytrazc%29/Start.aspx
Put the APN (with no dashes) into the Bill # field.
For liens, it gets a little trickier. You can see if the previous owners have liens against them. Get their names from the property tax record. Hopefully the name is unusual enough. Then plug the names into the grand deed recorder database.
http://arcc.co.san-diego.ca.us/services/grantorgrantee/search.aspx
In order to see the contents of the liens/deeds you need to go to the county building to look it up (for free) or order it (and pay).
Also – if the property is held by a corporation, llc, partnership – you can sometimes see the agent or owner of the partnership through the CA Sec. of State’s website.
Some of this info may not be availble if the county has already recorded you as the owner, you can’t easily retrieve the previous owners name from the prop tax database.
January 18, 2012 at 3:26 PM #736275monticello67ParticipantRe: the Property tax, that’s how I found out there were “secured property taxes”/lien on the property… I stumbled upon it by going on the Riverside County Assessor’s website, curious to see how much our property taxes were after we had purchased the property.
Re: other liens against the previous owner, those follow the property, too?? How do I obtain this info if it is a property in Riverside county?
You made a comment earlier about whether or not I bought the second deed of trust or first… how do it determine that in looking at the “Prelim Title” provided to us?
January 18, 2012 at 6:02 PM #736294SD RealtorParticipantA few things…
First off, regarding the pr (preliminary title report). Again, I would stress to you that you should go get an updated one. Go to a reputable title company, pay the money and get one now.
Second, the trustee is under no obligation at all to provide a title report. In fact I am very surprised they did that at all as I would think that by doing so they could incur some sort of liability. However I would not trust it even if they did.
Third, one of the real kickers are IRS liens. Finding them is much more difficult. I believe the right of redemption is 90 days depending on the state. I have forgotten alot of the knowledge I obtained when we were hot and heavy into this stuff. If you have owned the property over 90 days and have not been contacted then you are probably okay.
Fourth, as UCGAL suggested you can find tax liens by going to the assessors site for the county that the home is in. If the house is in Riverside County then that is where you will find any property tax liens. No other counties can levy taxes on the home.
Fifth, there are a myriad of other issues such as judgements and such that can affect the status of a home with respect to liens. I will not even start to get into those aspects.
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Now I cannot advise you strongly enough, and I am not trying to be harsh, just honest…. If you do not know how to determine a first from a second deed from the pr, then please, please, please do not go to a trustee sale and buy another home. Do yourself a large favor and take the time to learn about things first before plunging in.
I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about real estate and I had two very astute investors with me when we did this. We had the help of a great title officer and some of their staff. Even with that, we made a few dry runs and had a runner to help us scope properties and such. With all that in place we were all scared sh-tless when doing this stuff. We literally spent a few thousand hours between all the auctions, scoping out homes, studying liens, title information, trying to determine if tenants or owners were in the home, trying to determine if the home was in decent shape etc… and in all that time, all that research we did 14 homes.
To hear that you bought a home and are not sure about how to decipher a pr is chilling. I am glad you got the home and I hope you do alright. Do yourself a favor and think about hiring someone to help you guys out with this stuff or take the time to learn it… all it takes is one bad purchase at trustee sale and you are screwed.
January 18, 2012 at 6:53 PM #736298monticello67ParticipantIt has been 6 months and so for noone has “knocked on our door” (as far as any IRS liens, etc). The only thing that we have stumbled upon so far is this property tax issue which I found myself trying to see what property tax we were owing this year since the purchase. That is how I discovered the secured property taxes from the last 2 years. Per the Assessor’s Office, they do not record liens on single family residences. However, I did find out the we will need to pay the delinquent taxes owed on the property. I was advised to go to the Recorder’s Office and do a search on “recorded documents” under the previous owner. This I shall do tomorrow.
The deed has been recorded under my name since July and so far, noone has contacted me nor attempted to collect anything. Could that be a good sign?
January 18, 2012 at 7:13 PM #736305SD RealtorParticipantFrom the standpoint of an IRS lien then yes I would say you are in the clear, you do not have to worry about a redemption, (in which you would be paid whatever you paid for the home plus interest by the IRS if you didn’t want to cure the lien).
As far as the property taxes then yeah just go and pay them and you will be fine. Check out the recordings on the home at the assessors office as well, that is a wise step… and free also.
January 19, 2012 at 10:48 AM #736400monticello67ParticipantThanks for the input and advice, UCGal and SD Realtor.
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