I just bought some land at a tax auction in California for about $24000. The minimum bid was $20000 of back taxes. It has a trailer on it, but apparently this was taxed as a separate APN # and subsequently, has ADDITIONAL back taxes of $23000 which were not part of the land sale! If I evict the current squatters and they abandon the home (most likely scenario), will I then be responsible for an additional $23k to secure ownership under this scenario? I normally wouldn’t be concerned but this place is in a low value area and I don’t expect to get much more for the property at resale. Has anyone dealt with anything like this? I’m desperate for answers as payment is due tomorrow.
You’re buying the land not the trailer so not your problem- yet. The real question is once you own the property what it’s going to cost you to get rid of the trailer?
Correct. But I would prefer to just sell the land with the trailer. I can see it is quite a long process to remove it and most likely there will be little to no value in the trailer itself. The problem is this specific area has very very little value in the property. Lots are going for $7k regularly. It just isn’t worth the hassle of going through a major tedious process so I’m trying to figure out what to do.
Just based on what you have mentioned- no property value, no trailer value, heavy back taxes on both this seems like a bad idea. Unless you know something about this piece of property that pushes it’s potential value well over 47k + the cost of fixing up the trailer to sell as a package it seems problematic at best. Maybe you could go to the County negotiate them clearing some if not all the back taxes on the trailer if you buy the property. Maybe.