Sell Your House With Back Taxes — We Pay the County at Closing.

Yes — with the right buyer. Selling a house with back taxes is legal in every U.S. state. The complication is that the title can’t transfer clean until the tax debt is satisfied, which is why traditional buyers and realtors usually walk away. Sure Path specializes in this exact situation: we buy properties with back taxes and pay the county directly at closing, so the title clears as part of the transaction.

We do. The back-tax payoff is a line item on the settlement statement — we wire the county directly out of the sale proceeds. You receive the net after that’s settled. Nothing comes out of your pocket beforehand, and the exact payoff number is in writing before you sign anything.

It depends entirely on the state. Florida moves to a tax-deed sale after 2 years of delinquency. Texas allows the county to start judicial foreclosure after about a year. California and Oregon use a 5-year clock before public auction. Wisconsin runs ~3 years on county-administered tax-foreclosure timelines. Step one when you call us is verifying your actual foreclosure date with the county so we know exactly what we’re working against.

Yes — IRS liens are common on properties we buy. The IRS has two relevant forms: Form 14134 (subordination — lets the sale go through with the lien attaching to proceeds) and Form 14135 (discharge of property from lien). The IRS typically responds in 30–45 days. We file the paperwork as part of closing prep so it doesn’t bottleneck the deal.

Honest answer: the back-tax balance comes out of the offer math, plus any repair work the property needs, plus our acquisition margin. A property worth $250K with $15K in back taxes and $20K in deferred maintenance typically nets the seller something in the $145K–$175K range, depending on the local market and how many additional liens are involved. We give you the full breakdown in writing — no algorithm games, no closing-table reductions.

At closing, the title company (or in our case, the curative-title team we work with) issues payoff to the county out of the sale proceeds. The county releases its lien once payment clears, and the title transfers clean to the buyer. Your name comes off the tax roll. The whole settlement is documented on the HUD-1 (or Closing Disclosure / CD) you receive at signing.

Yes — every title search pulls the current tax-roll status. There’s no hiding back taxes from a buyer. That’s actually good news for you: when we pull title and confirm the balance, the number you see is the number we’ll pay off. No mid-closing surprises.

This is exactly what we’re built for. We handle multi-lien properties regularly — back taxes plus IRS liens, mechanic’s liens, judgments, old mortgages, or chain-of-title gaps. We pull full title, identify every claim, and settle them at closing. There are limits (the property has to have enough value to cover everything plus a fair offer to you), but we’ll tell you clearly during step 2 whether the math works.

We’ll tell you honestly. Sometimes the back-tax balance plus other liens exceeds what the property is worth, and an offer doesn’t make sense for either side. When that happens we point you toward other options — sometimes that’s a deed-in-lieu, sometimes it’s walking away strategically before the county does it for you. We won’t pretend a deal works when it doesn’t.

No. You don’t need to gather documents, pull title, or get a payoff letter. We do all of that for you. The only things we need on the first call: the property address, a rough idea of how much is owed, and what you want the outcome to look like. Everything else is on us.