All Forum Posts by: Dan Mahoney

@Tommy Davis As always, I am not a lawyer and I can't offer you legal advice.  If you closed with an attorney, the property was transferred via warranty deed, and you purchased title insurance, the unpaid taxes (County and City) from before the date of the tax sale were probably stripped from the property via a quiet title action.  It's also possible someone made a mistake and forgot to deal with the City taxes.  If you could track down the Final Order from the quiet title action (assuming there was one), you could get a more definitive answer to your question.

@Tuyet Changivy  I'm not an attorney so I can't give you legal advice.  But I have dealt with code enforcement liens in Atlanta and can share my experience.

1) This isn't as urgent as you are making it out to be.  It's theoretically possible that the county could try to levy on the property to collect the lien, but it's not normal practice.  Even if the county did levy, it's not a quick process.  These liens usually only get paid when property changes hands.

2) The County Tax Commissioner can't help you here.  They didn't create the lien.  Their answer will always be "pay up."

3) Yes, your closing attorney should have found this lien in the title search (assuming it is recorded).  Still, you may not have any recourse.  Title insurance policies often have exclusions for municipal liens like this.  It's worth continuing to call the attorney, but don't assume they will solve this for you.

4) As @John Underwood suggested, your best bet is likely to get in touch with the office that issued the lien.  In the City of Atlanta it would usually be the Atlanta Police Department.  In other jurisdictions it could be part of the building department.  If they did lien on the wrong property (it happens), they will likely release the lien for you.  Start with phone calls - you may not get responses to emails.

5) Another possibility is that they put a lien on your property for "clean and close," which is when they board up a vacant property and clean up trash and overgrowth.  Sometimes this shows up as a "demolition lien" even if the property wasn't actually demolished.  If this is what happened, you're on the hook for it now.

@Tyler Hampton In the City of Atlanta there is also an annual solid waste assessment of about $500 per house that is billed separately from the taxes (but is still collected by the Tax Commissioner).  Don't forget to put that in your underwriting.

You can also appeal the County's assessment of value each year.  The deadline to appeal the 2019 assessment passed last week but you could appeal the 2020 assessment next spring/summer when it comes out.  Even if you lose the appeal it will freeze the assessed value for 2 years.

@Bryan O. @Dmitriy Fomichenko I stand corrected!

@Mike Sherman I'm not aware of anyone selling a list like that.  You could build it by hand by cross-referencing the ads in Fulton County Daily Report (minimum bid) with the tax deeds recorded in the Fulton County land records (price paid).  Probably more useful for researching a specific property vs. trying to build a comprehensive list.  

The Sheriff typically cries the non-judicial sales first and then does the judicial sales (there are typically fewer) on the same morning.  I'm not an expert on judicial tax sales, but here is an article from a local law firm that may shed some light:

https://www.weissman.law/resources/tackling-blight-encouraging-development-how-judicial-tax-sales-can-be-your

@Bryan O. In reading through this thread I'm wondering if there is a basic misunderstanding of your situation.  The various commentators (@George Blower @Brian Eastman @Dmitriy Fomichenko), all of whom sell self-directed solo 401k plans, appear to assume that you already have a self-directed solo 401k plan.  It sounds like the problem may be that you've hired TD Ameritrade to serve as trustee, recordkeeper and/or administrator for your solo 401k plan, and, in that capacity, they are creating obstacles to your investing outside of their "menu."  This means you do not actually have a self-directed solo 401k plan.  

If you set up a self-directed 401k plan, YOU will be the trustee, recordkeeper and administrator.  In that role, you can simply open a business checking account for the trust at your local community bank.  The bank doesn't need to know that the trust holds qualified plan assets.  To them it's just a business checking account titled in the name of a trust.

Of course, I may have totally misunderstood your situation, in which case feel free to disregard...

@David LyonsAtlanta Housing serves the City of Atlanta only (so, not Hapeville). There are other housing authorities that serve other areas but I’ve never worked with them.  In some cases it’s possible for voucher holders to transfer from one housing authority to another if they need to move.

@David Lyons in today’s market, the demand for Section 8 rentals in the City of Atlanta significantly exceeds the supply of landlords willing to accept Atlanta Housing vouchers.  If you have a decent unit, especially if it’s a single family house, you will get a lot of interest from both Section 8 voucher holders and unsubsidized applicants.  The voucher holders tend to be more motivated than the unsubsidized applicants because Atlanta Housing gives them a deadline and most landlords in town don’t accept the vouchers.  The reason for this, as @Rick Baggenstoss pointed out, is that accepting Section 8 vouchers requires that a landlord submit to a painful bureaucratic approval and inspection process that all but guarantees a month or more of vacancy at the start of each lease. Once the tenants move in they tend to stay long term because the bureaucracy is just as painful for them.  On balance it’s an attractive program for landlords but dealing with Atlanta Housing can be very frustrating. 

@Ludmila M.  If you'd like to own the property you need to stop the tax sale.  Simplest way to do this is to close on the property a couple weeks before the tax sale and make sure all taxes, liens, and levies are paid off with the sale proceeds.  Make sure to get title insurance.  Your binding contract does not affect the timeline of the tax sale.

Maybe the seller will let you close now if you agree to rent back to them for a couple months?

@Merlin Gentry Again, I have to point out that I'm not a lawyer and I can't give legal advice. But I can make some observations from my own experience (specific to Georgia). In general, when an unpaid lien against real property forecloses, it wipes out all liens with lower priority than the lien being foreclosed. The foreclosure can't wipe out liens with higher priority. Unlike some states, Georgia does not give HOA and condo liens a super priority status. Assuming there are no federal or state liens, the county tax liens will be the most senior, the city will be next, and then the rest of the liens will be prioritized in the chronological order they were recorded. This is the general rule; there are exceptions and that's why it's good to get legal advice before committing capital.

As an aside, it makes sense that property owners that don't pay their taxes might also not pay their mortgage, HOA, water bill, etc., which is why you see these parallel foreclosures. Typically this happens because the property has negative equity and/or the owner died. The Georgia tax foreclosure process provides a way to clear title but it's complicated, expensive, and takes a long time.