To be honest, it never occured to me to check on utilities when a tenant moves out.Check that your locality is allowed to add liens to your property, if you had not been in possession of it when those charges occured.In Georgia utilities are not allowed to do it, but yhe water company does it routinely and will lie straight into your face until you produce the law.

I might even sign a release reserving the right to buy at my price if the brother doesn't buy and retain full title only in his name and maintain possession for x years, that might change the brothers attempts to make a buck by cutting you out or turning it into a rental, etc.

But there's a law in Georgia that states that a utility can't do that, unless the owner was in possession of the property while that water bill accrued.

Then send a writ of possession and the sheriffs office will call you to schedule an eviction for the tenant or tenants.

So once the Certificate of Title is issued, the new owner can motion for a Writ of Possession.

I've been looking into a couple of these in my county and it looks like to me that they actually go through the legal process of notifying and foreclosing on their note and then just quit claim their interest to whoever buys it at auction.Makes sense from their perspective, saves them the cost of taking possession of the property, removing occupants, boarding up, winterizing.I've driven by the ones I'm interested in and they don't appear to be occupied.

After that, we can officially take possession of the house and start the turnover process.

All will be moved out before I take possession.

As a new owner, you have to allow occupants access to remove their stuff until eviction since legally they have possession of the property.

Our building was insured, and the damage was covered for us, but the tenants lost all their possessions and had no place to go.