Buying a house with a lien

[Laura Capps]

We are looking at a house that has a lien on it from two code violations. One of the violations, renting without a license, was complied with, the other was for an unpermitted add-on. The previous owner did a bunch of work to correct these things, however when the code inspector came out he noticed a few small things such as painting, some wood rot, and a retaining wall that needs to be fixed. It looks like the lien started on 2/6/15 at $100 a day, and then stopped on 12/4/15. We've been told that once the house has been rehabbed we could go to the magistrate and make a case for repairing the whole house and the lien could be reduced to less then $5,000 for administration fees. Has anyone dealt with anything like this?