Sell a House With a Tax Lien in Palm Coast, FL

The investor who holds a tax certificate on your Palm Coast house has never seen it and has no right to. On June 1 the Flagler County Tax Collector sold the unpaid tax bill on your parcel to whoever accepted the lowest interest rate, and that buyer is now owed the taxes plus interest. The certificate is a lien, so a title company will not close a sale without paying it, but the holder cannot enter the property, cannot evict you and cannot take the deed. Only an application for a tax deed, made after two years, and a clerk's auction can do that, and until the clerk issues that deed you can pay the lien off and keep every bit of your equity.

Palm Coast Cash Buyers buys houses carrying tax certificates and other tax liens across Palm Coast, Flagler Beach and Bunnell. The title company pulls the exact redemption figure, pays it from the purchase price at closing, and the certificate is cancelled. This page explains what the certificate holder actually owns, how the interest is calculated, how long your right to redeem lasts in Flagler County, and the arithmetic of your net when a tax lien is on the title.

A Florida tax certificate is a receipt for someone else paying your taxes. The Flagler County Tax Collector sells one on each delinquent parcel on or before June 1, and the bidder who accepts the lowest interest rate wins. The holder earns that interest when you redeem and does not own the house, has no key to it and no say in how you use it. The deed stays in your name. You can live in the home, rent it, insure it and sell it. What the holder has is a lien that must be paid before clear title passes, and a right, after two years from the April 1 delinquency date, to ask the clerk to sell the property. Many Palm Coast owners first learn of a certificate from a title search, not from the holder, because the holder has nothing to send you until that application.

Bidding at the certificate sale starts at 18% and is bid down; the lowest rate wins. Florida sets a 5% minimum, so a certificate bought at a very low rate still costs at least 5% to redeem on top of the taxes. The redemption figure is the delinquent taxes, the interest at the certificate's rate, and the Tax Collector's costs. If a tax deed application has been filed, the application also pays off every other certificate on the parcel, and those amounts plus the clerk's fees are added to what you must pay. The figure grows with every month, which is why a certificate is cheapest to clear early. The title company obtains the official amount from the Tax Collector, at 1769 E. Moody Blvd in Bunnell or the Palm Coast branch at 213 St. Joe Plaza, before closing.

Redemption means paying everything due so the certificate is cancelled. In Flagler County you can redeem any time before the Clerk of the Circuit Court issues the tax deed to the winning bidder at flagler.realtaxdeed.com. That is true the week after the certificate sells, after the holder applies through LienHub, and after the clerk mails its notice of sale. The processing of a tax deed application can take up to 3 months, and the clerk's Tax Deeds office at 386-313-4375 can tell you where your parcel stands. After the deed issues there is no redemption; the property belongs to the auction buyer and the former owner's remaining interest is any surplus held by the clerk. A sale to us that closes before the deed issues is a form of redemption: the certificate is paid at closing and the process ends.

A tax lien can also mean a notice of federal tax lien recorded by the IRS in the Flagler County official records, or a Florida Department of Revenue warrant. These attach to everything you own, including the house, and the title company treats them like any other recorded lien. If your equity covers the debt, the lien is paid from the proceeds at closing and the agency releases it. If the equity does not cover it, the title company requests that the agency release the house in exchange for the net proceeds, a decision the agency makes on its own schedule. We set the closing date around that answer rather than promising a date the IRS has not agreed to. Bring any agency letter when you reach out; the recording details on it save the title company time.

The arithmetic of a sale with a tax lien is plain. The purchase price is the starting point. From it the title company pays any mortgage payoff, then the tax certificate redemption and any other recorded liens, and wires you the balance. We pay the customary closing costs and charge no commission, so nothing else comes off the top. On a Palm Coast house near the median of around $360,000, a certificate representing a few years of taxes is a small fraction of the equity, and in a city where 37.7% of owners hold their home free and clear, the certificate is often the only lien at all. If the house has a mortgage, the servicer may already have paid the taxes to protect its own lien and added the amount to your loan; that then appears in the mortgage payoff instead.

Look up your parcel with the Flagler County Tax Collector to see which years are delinquent and whether a certificate has been sold or a tax deed application filed. Check the Flagler Clerk's official records for any IRS or state lien in your name. Then send us the address. We see the house within a day or two, deliver a written offer within 24 hours of the visit, and ask the title company to order the redemption figure and lien payoffs at once. A closing in about a week is possible once those figures are in hand. An inherited house in Palm Harbor, a seasonal home in Hammock Dunes or a vacant lot in Seminole Woods all follow the same path, as-is, with the lien settled from the price.