All Forum Posts by: Diana Poch

The owner's redemption period expires 2/10/17.  The junior lien holder has filed an intent to redeem so they have a 7 calendar day redemption period (Minnesota).  Our contract with auction.com/Wells Fargo expires 2/28/17 but if they no longer own the property; they can't sell it to us.  The payoff amount is 88,000 + 4.625% interest for a year so about 30,000 difference... I don't think Wells Fargo is going to give us the payoff difference though.  

We asked the junior lien holder if they would be willing to not redeem and buy the property in a simultaneous close from us for less than the redemption amount (we offered to do a purchase price of 75,000) but they were unwilling to do so, which is a bummer since we could have both benefited as we would have at least walked away with some profit and they would have bought a house for 18,000 less than expected.  

I guess this is one of those SOL situations.  :/  I just wonder how many houses auction.com and Wells Fargo lists that they do not actually own yet and then just hold people's earnest money.  We've had almost 4,000 held since August on this property.  Seems very scam - ish.

:)  I've spoken to several and have gotten extremely conflicting responses ranging from you can pay off the lien holder to there's nothing that can be done.  

But thank you!

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.