Let’s say that you buy a home in cash and have 100% paid off. Could you still lose it somehow?
If you don’t pay your taxes, yes
HoA fees
Eminent domain but they will pay you “market value”
Being force into a sale due to investor taking over a condo building
Property taxes of most primary dwellings should not be a thing.
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.
Back in the neighborhood I grew up in, we actually had a drug house that was taken by civil asset forfeiture. They had an RV/trailer (IDK which it was) in their driveway that people would go into for drug related shit and at one point a vehicle was set on fire in the middle of the night, probably to destroy the evidence it was stolen. I’m glad the drug selling scum were taken care of, especially since there were kids on the block.
There are two kinds of asset forfeiture: civil and criminal. Criminal would be what you describe, if you are convicted they can seize any property involved in the crime. Civil asset forfeiture is something else, and it often abused to take things where the crime is only suspected. (It was originally supposed to be used to take property involved in a crime, such as an empty pirate ship, where the owner is not known.)
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.
There’s also eminent domain and HOA’s
Eminent domain has been used a lot in the past to target minority groups.
How much is the property tax?
This is Texas which has no income tax, so they have high property tax. It’s about 1% per annum based on the appraised value of the property. Plus if it’s a newer neighborhood, you pay an extra amount for the cost of infrastructure until it’s paid off, usually called a MUD (municipal utility district) tax. Mine is an extra 1.2% so I’m paying roughly $1200/month in property taxes for my residence.
Christ on a bike, do they at least lube the dildo they fuck you with?!? 😳
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Americans ultimately do pay a lot of taxes in the end. It does towards all sorts of stuff at multiple levels but the greatest impact on individual lives is at the state level.
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I like to say that in Texas, you never actually own your home.
The property tax is based on the assessed value of the property. (Which can change over time, even if you bought it years ago.) And the tax ranges from 0.28% in Hawaii up to 2.49% in New Jersey. Most states are around 1%. There may also be local taxes from a county or city, which is typically a small fraction of the above.
Depends on where you live. Here in Washington state we don’t have an income tax, so our property taxes are one of the few ways the government has to collect taxes. For that reason our property taxes are much higher than states that have multiple ways to collect.
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.
Do you have more info on those that actually own? Sounds interesting.
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.
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I’m talking about the respective government of the country in question, not the US government…
This sounds dubious. Sources?
Eminent Domain, I think it’s called. I know around the DC area, a lot of people lost houses, businesses, and properties to make way for more highways in the last 50 years.
Theoretically eminent domain still exists but it’s only used to replace black neighborhoods with highways
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).
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
That’s not so much losing your home as it is having it forcibly purchased from you at a fair market price. At least in theory.
Yep, you only think you own your home after it’s paid off. Try missing a single property tax.
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.
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ooh I didn’t know that! someone without insurance rear-ended my vehicle but I chose not to pursue it because then my own insurance rates would’ve gone up. But heck I didn’t know I could have gotten a house out of it 😄 okay but judging by the state of that guy, I doubt he had a very glamorous living situation.
You could own a room in a crack-house
Honestly I doubt he had even THAT much going for him ☹️
That sounds like the premise for a new Tim & Eric series.
I mean, you could rent that out for a couple grand nowadays. “Market rate” baby.
You probably wouldnt have gotten the house. Rather he’d have to sell it to pay the debt.
If you’re injured, or have a lawyer and doctor say you were, yeah… you don’t literally get their house but they might have to sell it to pay you. More often, their insurance company would pay.
This was the whole premise of Happy Gilmore. He became a pro golfer to save his grandma’s house
Holy fuck lmao
dude… that’s dark. haha
There are typically property taxes you have to pay every year, unless exempt
I used to see stories in the legaladvice subreddit regularly about Housing Owner Associations putting legitimate liens on properties for not following the rules. Even when the rules were as ridiculous as “air-conditioning unit can’t be visible from the street” or “only these specific plants can be grown and your lawn cannot exceed a few inches in height and must always be green” or “internal curtains must be pink or white”.
For a culture that prides itself on its freedoms, the miniature authoritarian regimes that HOAs embody are a great example of the evidence not matching the story.
HOAs started as a way to keep neighborhoods white only. Now it’s a way for developers to have a super majority vote to keep giving themselves contracts and a way for control freaks to control their neighbors. They started as bad actors and now some are bad actors for other reasons.
Not all HOAs are terrible but there aren’t a lot of actual accountability in-spite of some laws to stop corruption and there’s not a ton of benefits for most except perhaps for condos.
For example, I wouldn’t mind having an HOA that contracts rates for trash, lawn care, creates and maintains a park with some stuff for kids, maintains beautification of non-homeowner areas and maybe even has security patrols. You know, actual amenities to keep the neighborhood nice and convenient for the home owners. Not an HOA that makes sure that shampoo bottles in people’s bathroom windows aren’t visible, front doors have to match some aesthetic or have to approve decks and sheds for people’s yards.
I rent in a medium-high-density non-US housing complex. It’s obviously necessary after you live like this for a few years that there needs to be an organisational body to deal with building and land issues, especially when there are hundreds of people who occupy a shared structure that needs to be maintained and repaired. For example, if the water goes out for me, it could also be out for hundreds of other people, which makes it a more expensive and higher stakes problem than a single detached house with one family, and more than one person will need to make the decision on how it is repaired and by whom.
Local governing bodies are not necessarily based in racism or hyper-control motives either, even if American (and other country) housing organisations regularly use it for those purposes even today. These organisations are borne from the complex needs of living in a peaceful community of different people with different desires and needs.
But experience has also told me that this works better when the overarching legal systems are more accessible and corruption-resistant. The biggest problem is that it is very difficult to evaluate what patch of land (or walls and floor) has the best longitude and latitude to provide a decent probability of not being exploited for someone else’s gain or suffering from someone else’s bad decisions. It’s a constant global issue, and the consistent theme is that most places favour the wealthiest human in housing or other legal disputes.
I rent in a medium-high-density non-US housing complex.
Well, we’re talking about home ownership here. If you’re renting then your landlord/management company or whatever decides policies that are compliant with your laws. If they allow some sort of HOA-like structure where residents can participate in a sort of ‘council’ that advises them or has some sort of authority of the landlord, then so be it.
I did however, bring up condos, where a person essentially has an ownership stake in a housing complex but other people also have ownership of their dwelling and the land is shared. It absolutely makes sense to have an HOA then. Someone’s got to arbitrate in shared spaces and since the person that owns the dwelling doesn’t have a landlord, then well, it would be terrible not to have an HOA.
Local governing bodies are not necessarily based in racism
I didn’t say they were. I am stating a fact, that in the US, HOAs started as way to enforce gentrification. There were actual racist deed agreements and binding covenants. This isn’t an opinion or speculation.
Sources:
University of Washington
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
Housing Matters
Denver Post
Business InsiderBut experience has also told me that this works better when the overarching legal systems are more accessible and corruption-resistant.
OK but that’s not everyone’s opinion. My neighbors and I get along fine without an HOA, except for the lady who denied receiving my package once even though I had it on camera and my wife’s curtains are hanging on her windows now but an HOA wouldn’t have solved that anyway.
Well, we’re talking about home ownership here. If you’re renting then…
Yes, even as a mere renter myself I am extremely familiar with the workings of home ownership in my area and the legal rights and responsibilities of each. I just didn’t feel it necessary to elaborate on how I know. It didn’t seem relevant.
I am stating a fact, that in the US, HOAs started as way to enforce gentrification. There were actual racist deed agreements and binding covenants. This isn’t an opinion or speculation.
Yes, I am aware many home owners organisations were begun in the US out of xenophobic backlash after slavery was partially abolished. However, the concept of groups of owner-occupiers and investors/developers governing their community is not a uniquely US thing, and likely existed in practise before the term “Home Owners Association” was coined. I could have been clearer that i was speaking more globally and generally, but this is why I used the non-US-specific term “local governing bodies” which could cover everything from favella gang leaders to democraticly dlrected government councils.
OK but that’s not everyone’s opinion. My neighbors and I get along fine without an HOA,
Yes, most owner occupiers where I live also luve without being under an HOA, but they are still also subject to the laws and regulations of their local councils, state governments, federal governments, strata bodies and everyone else in between. Renters like me, or owner occupiers too are able to seek legal recourse through those courts. Depending on the value in dispute, they are able to do it without lawyers. In other communities, such as small towns where the sheriff is the mayor and the local judge was elected with no legal experience… this would be a much bigger problem for the person with little cash.
I wouldn’t even want to live again in a building where the majority vote on repairs was held by non-occupying investors. It leads to stupid amounts of decay.
I think you mean “amenities” rather than “enmities.”
Yes I did and I’m embarrassed. Thank you for the correction!!
america is a sick joke
Amen… never buy a house in a HOA if you plan to actually keep and payoff said house. Even if its a “good one”, they can and do change. All it takes is a vote for your $50/mo HOA to become $1000+/mo because they want to build a golf course or do custom street signs and a pool or whatever.
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.
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.
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.
Do they have to be wearing funny hats? Asking for a friend
Of course not. You can shoot pretty much anybody in the US.
That’s not true. Only cops get that right.
