All Forum Posts by: Paul S.

It sounds like the city demolished the building.  I've had to deal with the same situation in the past.  I suspect if you look up the address on the BRT you will find that there are years of back taxes owed against the property.  Your best course of action is to head to the revenue department and pay a $1000 deposit to initiate a tax sale against the property.  

The process takes about a year but your deposit will be returned after the sale or applied towards your bid.  Short of tracking down the owner and purchasing it directly, this is the only thing you can do to speed up getting the property into the hands of someone that will do something with it.

I'm not exactly sure what your situation is.  Go to L&I and look up the permits to see who is doing the demo and if there are any other permits being pulled for reconstruction and whatnot.  If its the city tearing it down, try to figure out how to purchase the resulting lot.  If its an investor tearing it down, they are probably planning a rehabb of some sort.

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.co...

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.co...

Just a couple examples.  You can google piles of them over the years. 

I've been a real estate investor for 20 years and I can tell you it's happened to me 3 three times where I was sitting in settlement and it turned out that the person attempting to sell me the house was not the owner.  2 times were outright fraud, and one time was a gentleman who had been scammed and was selling  property he "bought" years ago.

In 2 of those cases I tracked down the original owners and went through legal channels to have the ownership reverted.

When I say Philadelphia is unique.  It's not that there are properties which no one wants to bid on at tax sales.  It's that, often times, it takes years and years for a property to end up even going to tax sale.  A good example is, I purchased the lot next to my house at tax sale.  Taxes had not been paid since 1976, and I purchased it in about 2015.  I know it was the first time it went to tax sale because in doing my due diligence I pulled all the relevant court documents related to the property.  I don't know how many counties in the US allow an owner to neglect paying RE taxes for 40 years before a tax sale happens, but it's not unheard of here.

Oh...back to the original point about inheritance tax and all that.  The problem for the title companies isn't so much what's owed as when it was owed.  Because it's retroactive, the liability could go back 200 years.

The problem really comes down to, who was the last company to have insured the property.  If grandma bought the place and got title insurance in 1990, then died and everything went through probate and all was taken care of, no big deal.

If grandma inherited the property from great great granduncle 1930 who got it from uncle Jed in 1850, who stole it from One Eyed Charly in a card game in 1435...well...you see why a title company would want to be cautious. Because PA basically decided all that stuff is fair game

This is a continuing problem in PA.  Basically, what the state did was they said.  "if there are any inheritance taxes or fees owed on a property they have to be paid before there can be a transfer of title"

This seems to make sense, except, the state made is retroactive.  So, if there were EVER and inheritance taxes or fees owed on a property.....

A bunch of title companies got banged, and so no one will insure title on tax sales properties unless they have been seasoned to some extent.  Tax sale properties specifically because they tend to be the ones where grandma dies, the house is paid off, and no one claims the house to pay the taxes, therefore it goes to tax sale.

As far as the most recent post goes.  Where the property went for tax sale but there is a mortgage.  I'm not an attorney, but as far as I can tell you just won the lottery.  Taxes override mortgages in position.  Thats why banks want to escrow taxes to make sure they get paid off.  Funds from the Tax sale pay the taxes, then whatever is leftover goes to the junior lien holders....ie...the bank...who can go pound sand from then on....

I know this is an old thread.  But reading through the replies I was getting really pissed off at the responses.

If you have no idea WTF you're talking about you shouldn't try to provide advice.  Stolen deeds is a somewhat uniquely Philadelphia problem.  

The OP is claiming that their grandmother unknowingly inherited a property from the 60's and this is coming to light some 60 years later.

Any other place in the country, that property would have long gone to tax sale and been bought and sold 10 times.

Philadelphia is so far behind that it is quite possible that no one has paid RE taxes in 60 years and it is still on the list to go to tax sale, therefore is still in grandmas name.

Second problem is, it's ridiculously easy in Philadelphia to forge documents and transfer ownership.

What your cousin needs to do, and I doubt he will do this.  I've seen this sort of thing dozens of times before where someone finds out they have something and think they will make a million dollars only to discover it takes some actual work to do so.  But perhaps it will help someone else out there.

1st

All the mostly free stuff you can do:

1:Go to the records department and pull copies of deeds back to grandma

2:Go to L&I and pull copies of permits and records of what happened to the house that used to be there.

3:If its not in grandmas name, and she didn't sell it, and it never went to sheriffs sale, get in touch with the tangled titles fund to figure out if there are resources to fix it.

Specifically to your cousin.  The attorney he hired is not very good.  Discovered deed fraud, which is very common in Philadelphia.  Billions of dollars of houses are stolen every year.  The deed needs to be reverted back to your grandmothers name, then it has to go through probate and your cousin will have to make an argument before a judge that he/she should be the beneficiary.  Once the property is legally in their name, they can go ahead and develop it.  

But it doesn't end there.  Your cousin better make damn sure that the property if free and clear of all encumbrances when they go to sell it.  Because at the end of the day, whoever buys the place will be doing their homework and if there are any left over debts on the property, those will not be passed along to the buyer.

Hope this helps someone in the future trying to navigate this stuff.  Its much more nuanced and complicated that just hiring a title company and a contractor to fix a house.  But there is money to be made by those who take the time and effort to figure out how these things actually work in real life.

First of all, I've been an investor for a really long time.  And I'm sort of new to BIggerPorckets.  So take my advice as you will. 

I've been reading through these posts and getting increasingly frustrated at the advice.

So from what I understand, you are looking for a duplex.  Inventory is low, prices feel high, and it feels like there is a lot of competition to purchase what is available.

The advice that I have seen, is to work harder to look, work harder to find financing so you can pay more or to hook up with someone that can make your deal happen.  I could be wrong, and I haven't invested a ton of time reading through everything, but it all seems like piss poor advice.

Investing is about looking at things at an odd angle.  You discovered, there is a high demand and a low supply of duplexes.  Instead of trying to buy a duplex, it sounds to me like you should be trying to sell a duplex.  How about you spend your time figuring out how to navigate local and state codes to make that happen? 

In the end you might end up going through the process of making your own deals increasing the value of property just through providing a new legal definition.  Or you may be able to become someone selling a valuable service as a navigator.

You don't go trying to buy something that everyone else is looking to buy, you spend your time trying to provide the product that the market is demanding. 

And for the love of god, if someone tells you to start cold calling and texting folks....run the other way

https://www.courts.phila.gov/p...

Gotta do your due diligence

You should give the landlord tenant court a call.  My understand is that you can evict in Philadelphia as long as the tenant hasn't applied for tenant releife.  In which case I beleive they hook them up with assistance programs.