Can I Sell My House With a Tax Lien?

It’s stressful to have a tax lien on your house, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t sell it. If you are interested in selling your house with a tax lien (and at We Buy Houses Cleveland, we buy houses in any condition for cash) here’s what you need to do.

What Is a Tax Lien?

As they say, only two things in life are certain: death and taxes. And if you don’t pay your taxes, a lien can be placed on your property. Essentially, that means that you can’t sell the property without paying off those taxes. There will still be collections events — you still need to pay those taxes — but you also won’t be able to sell your home free and clear.

But just because you can’t sell your home free and clear doesn’t mean you can’t sell at all. Quite the contrary. When you have a tax lien on your house, it’s usually best to sell it.

1. Find Out How Much You Owe

Your lien will be for how much you owe. So say you’re selling a $200,000 house. Your lien is for $14,000. You own your house outright. What will happen is you will sell your house, they will get sent $14,000, and you’ll be sent the difference. You need to know this because it could be that you’re underwater in your house. If you have a mortgage, your mortgage plus your taxes could be more than you can sell your house for. That doesn’t mean you can’t sell your house. It just means you might need to talk to your bank about a short sale.

2. Sell Your House Fast

It’s probably best to sell your house fast. You don’t want that tax lien hanging over your head. The tax lien isn’t all the tax office can do. They will start to levy penalties against you if you haven’t paid your taxes, and those penalties can be quite significant. So what you want to do is try to sell your house as fast as possible.

The fastest way to sell a house is to a cash buyer. We buy houses for cash, so you don’t need to wait for a mortgage loan to close. We can buy a house within days rather than weeks or months.

Of course, you could also do something like take out a HELOC to pay your tax debt. But ultimately, that’s only going to trade one form of debt for another and won’t fix the problem.

3. Resolve Your Debt

The good news is that the debt will be essentially resolved for you. Basically, what happens is the escrow company collects the entire payment. Then the escrow company resolves the lien.

This is the whole purpose of the lien. It makes it so you can’t sell your house without actually settling the debt. You don’t need to do anything. You just wait for the cash to be deposited into your account.

Selling Your House With a Tax Lien

The first step toward selling your house is to get a quote. We buy houses in any condition, whether they’re old, need repairs, or might need to be torn down. We’ll take a look at your property, determine how much it’s currently worth, and make you an offer.

We don’t need to use realtors — and we handle all the repairs ourselves. Because of that, we can make you a fair offer that will likely be more than you would end up making on the market.

If you want to market your house, you’ll have to do the repairs. You’ll have to hire an agent, hold showings, and wait until someone makes you an offer. But when you sell to us, we handle everything for you. And we can usually close a deal within a matter of days once you accept the offer. No outside appraisals, inspections, repairs, or contingencies are necessary. So you can sell a house with a tax lien. And you can sell your house to us! We buy houses as-is, so you don’t need to make any repairs or modifications. Contact us today to get a quote.