Minnesota Sheriff Sale, Junior Lien Holder and Auction.com

[Diana Poch]

We won a property on auction.com that was listed as the redemption period being over in August 2016 - well we won the rights to the sheriff's certificate. In actuality the redemption period expired in 2/2017 so auction.com reached out to Wells Fargo and did a price reduction down the 63,000. In our title company reviewing the title there are two junior liens on the property, one from the HUD and one from the HOA which sold their lien rights to an investment company. We were then told by auction.com we had to wait until the redemption period expired and they would transfer the title to us instead of the Sheriff's Certificate. This would be great news, except that the junior lien holder has filed a notice to redeem and intends to pay off the mortgage amount. If we were the Sheriff's certificate holder (as our contract indicated) we would be entitled to the payoff amount - now we will not receive anything and will not get the property.

So three questions:

1. Has anyone else experienced this sort of situation with auction.com? They have been holding our 4,000 earnest money since summer now and to walk away with nothing would be pretty rough.

2. Is there anyway we can pay off the junior lien holder ahead of time before their redemption? We reached out to them and they are not interested in being paid off.

3. Do we have any recourse on obtaining the payoff amount from Wells Fargo/ Auction.com since we were under a contract with them?

Any and all help will be extremely appreciated.