Personal Judgement listed on O&E

[Gregory Bentley]

We are looking at a property that will be on an upcoming auction and ordered and O&E report. When we got it back we noticed that it has a judgement lien that in which the defendant is not a listed party on the loan but the house is listed as collateral on the court document. The house has a $300,000+ ARV and the opening bid is $95,000, the judgement is $150,000. My question is, will that be a redeemable lien or will it follow the defendant in the case? If the awarded does not redeem in 10 days would it fall off or is this a special circumstance? Thanks in advance!

[Bill S.]

@Gregory Bentley time to ask your title attorney. Sorry it's really a question that you must get legal advise for and that legal advise will want to see the associated documents ( deed of trust, court case and lien language) as well. Without understanding all that, there is no good way to answer. 

Also, what is the auction? Some "auctions" wipe out liens and some don't. Tax lien sales are considered auctions and they can result in ownership. Foreclosure auctions also sell interests in the real property but can come with some issues. For example a 2nd deed of trust can foreclose on the property but the first deed of trust remains in place.

Unless you can be very specific it would be hard to provide even general guidance. Sometimes you can talk to the title company and they can provide guidance about issuing title on the property. You can ask for example, "If I purchase this property and want to resell with title insurance what items do you see that might cloud the title?" and "How have you seen those items addressed in the past?"

Some title people will share, some won't, some know and some don't. Work your network with people you trust and then pay for an attorney that knows what they are doing for the final answer.