134
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Let’s say that you buy a home in cash and have 100% paid off. Could you still lose it somehow?

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] [email protected] 155 points 7 months ago

If you don’t pay your taxes, yes

[-] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago

HoA fees

Eminent domain but they will pay you "market value"

Being force into a sale due to investor taking over a condo building

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Property taxes of most primary dwellings should not be a thing.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

This is how you get subscription-only fire departments.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Commerce and wealth-based taxes (income, sales, capital gains, etc) are sufficient to cover any and all social needs. Taxing people on their own possessions - especially those critical to living - is beyond unethical, it is evil.

A property tax on a primary dwelling residence is unethical because it is not attached to any act of commerce. It is your home. It is your family's life and legacy. Property taxes do not care whether the owners are billionaires or do not have a penny to their name, so they harm the middle class and the poor while it's little more than an afterthought for the wealthy. Case in point: Hawaiians who are forced to sell their ancestral homes because they cannot afford property tax... because the "value" of their ancestral land is constantly and steadily increased by wealthy interlopers. This is just plain, old-fashioned banditry and theft - nothing more and nothing less... and if you advocate for it or justify it, you advocate for evil.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 76 points 7 months ago

My property tax is $1200 a year. Failure to pay that for a while (a year or three) could result in the state selling the house, keeping the overdue taxes, and paying me the rest (if there is any. Sometimes they get sold cheap).

The state can also buy my house from me under eminent domain, to put in a rail line, or power lines, or some other utility. They'd owe me "fair value" for it, but they basically determine what that means, and it could be significantly less than what i could sell it in the market for (but to be fair, taxes are based on "fair value", and almost everyone quietly allows the state to low-ball their property value because of this).

It can also be condemned. If it's egregiously not maintained and shows obvious signs of structural issues, or the property gets hoarded up and looks like a trash dump. This is much more common with commercial property.

There's also civil asset forfeiture. If you're manufacturing and/or selling drugs/weapons/etc. (as a random example. Any crime counts really) on a property, it can be seized outright with no requisite compensation at all.

HOAs ar often described as similar to asset forfeiture, but they're closer to a tax siezure. The HOA has to have in its charter that they can fine members for rule violations, and the process for an HOA is the same as for overdue taxes, but with unpaid fines. The authority for HOA is entirely contractual, you have to sign a contract agreeing to those rules.

All of these are incredibly rare occurrences, and usually involve some sort of genesis, like an investor wants a specific property, neighbors hate someone, etc.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 62 points 7 months ago

Yes. It happened to my friends. They both lost their jobs and couldn't pay the property tax on their fully paid-off house, so it was foreclosed and auctioned off.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

There's also eminent domain and HOA's

Eminent domain has been used a lot in the past to target minority groups.

load more comments (11 replies)
[-] [email protected] 29 points 7 months ago

One thing to keep in mind is that in the US, there's very few people or companies that actually own the land that they're on. Most of the time you have the rights to use the land for certain types of things, but not actually own it. The US government (federal on down) has various ways of seizing property for its own purposes.

There's only a handful of people who actually own the land they live on. Most of them were granted the land by prior governments (mostly Spain) before the US was a country. Their ownership was grandfathered in and has passed via inheritance through the families. Several of those family plots are in Texas and Florida. Everyone else is just allowed to stay as long as they play ball with the rules.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

Do you have more info on those that actually own? Sounds interesting.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

To certain extents, I think the government has rights of expropriation of land in other countries too. Sometimes you can sue the government for it too. It's a messy biz.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago

You can get eminent domain'd or your house could be destroyed by natural disaster, house fire, etc.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago

Theoretically eminent domain still exists but it’s only used to replace black neighborhoods with highways

[-] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Not true! It's also used to seize property from existing owners in order to hand it off to private developers (see Kelo v. New London).

[-] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

But when we want passenger rail we have to buy the land at full price as set by the landowner no matter how much they’re gouging

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago

Yep, you only think you own your home after it's paid off. Try missing a single property tax.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago

Absolutely. You have to pay taxes on your property (in most states; there may be exceptions that I'm not aware of). If you don't pay your taxes for a long enough period of time, your property will be seized and auctioned off. Starting bids on property auctions are usually the back taxes; in less desirable areas--such as undeveloped land that with no utilities that's out in the middle of nowhere--that may be all it costs.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago
[-] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago

A common way that I don't see mentioned here is that it is common to take out a loan using your home as collateral, something like a major business loan not panning out or a mismanaged personal loan can absolutely end up letting the bank seize your house to pay off the loan.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago

If you fall behind on your property taxes, the local taxing authority can foreclosure on the property.

[-] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

This was the whole premise of Happy Gilmore. He became a pro golfer to save his grandma's house

[-] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

I feel like you had additional context to this question that you meant to add, but just totally forgot.

As it stands, yes of course. If your house in condemned or otherwise subject to eminent domain, if your house is seized to pay creditors for non-mortgage debt (in some states), if somebody else has superior title to your home and you aren’t protected by being a bonafide purchaser, etc.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Natural disasters and other "acts of god" are becoming more relevant - especially as some states, like Florida, have more insurance companies pulling out. Flood insurance is often unaffordable too.

load more comments (7 replies)
[-] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

There are typically property taxes you have to pay every year, unless exempt

[-] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

Yes, if a large meteor landed on it, it would probably be destroyed.

[-] Imgonnatrythis 11 points 7 months ago

I sell meteor insurance btw. DM me.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Let's not forget sink holes. :-D

[-] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

You can be shot by the cops, in your bed, while asleep. Yes I think you can lose your paid-off house.

[-] Imgonnatrythis 10 points 7 months ago

I've heard British people with funny hats can just take your home in the US, but if you own guns (most do) you can just shoot at them until they go away.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

Every country pretty much. Lawsuit. Don't pay taxes. Owe money to someone personally. You don't get to hide your assets behind a home and get into financial trouble in other areas.

This is also why homeowners typically live within the law. Too much to loose.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Sure. If your HOA does not like you, they will use your own money to pay lawyers against you, to dispossess you of your house. 'Murica!

[-] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

This is America, what do you think?

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
134 points (97.9% liked)

Asklemmy

42524 readers
947 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS