Note: BCP Real Estate is not a law firm and its employees/owners are not acting as your attorneys. The information contained on this website is provided for educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice on any subject matter.
When the taxes on an inherited property have gone unpaid and a sale is looming, some heirs quietly decide to just let it happen. The property feels like a lost cause, dealing with it is exhausting, and walking away seems easier than fighting. Before you take that route, it’s worth comparing what letting it go actually costs you against the alternative of selling your share on your own terms.
Letting a property go to a tax sale means giving up control of the outcome. The property is auctioned to satisfy the taxes and costs, and the timing, the price, and the process are out of your hands. If the property is worth more than what’s owed, and many are, that extra value is at risk. Any surplus from an auction is distributed under rules that don’t guarantee you’ll see much, if anything, and certainly not promptly. In effect, you’re trading away whatever your interest was worth in exchange for not having to deal with it, which is often a poor trade.
Selling your share before a sale flips that around. Instead of an auction deciding your fate, you make a deliberate choice: you agree to terms, you get paid for your interest, and your name comes off the property and out of the lawsuit. You capture value that a tax sale might otherwise wipe out, and you do it on a timeline you can plan around rather than waiting helplessly for a sale date. The complexity that made walking away tempting, the back taxes and title issues, becomes the buyer’s problem rather than yours.
The comparison usually isn’t close once you lay it out. Both paths end with you no longer owning the property, but one leaves you with cash and a clean exit, while the other leaves you with whatever an auction happens to produce, which may be nothing. The main thing tax sales reward is delay, so the sooner you look at your options, the more likely selling is still on the table. Even a property that feels like a lost cause may have value worth recovering before the auction takes that choice away.
A couple of questions we hear a lot:
If I do nothing and it sells at auction, won’t I still get the leftover money? Maybe some, maybe none. Any surplus is distributed under specific rules and isn’t guaranteed to reach you quickly or in full. Selling your share beforehand is a far more certain way to capture its value.
Is it too late to sell if a sale date is already set? Not always, there’s often still a window before the auction happens. Because that window can close fast, it’s worth checking your options right away rather than assuming it’s over.
If you’re looking to remove yourself from a lawsuit and get paid for your interest, no cost to you, call or text us at (469) 708-8003 for an offer today.
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