Baltimore’s Tax Sales Are Robbing People of Their Equity
“A few years back, the organization accrued a $2,543 property tax debt on its community center. So in 2018, the city sold that lien for $5,115 to a California-based investor, who then foreclosed on and sold the ECO’s building for $139,500. In return, the ECO got a check for the difference between its debt and the lien purchase price: $2,572.
In other words, all told, the organization paid six figures to compensate for the $2,543 it owed the government, in what a new federal lawsuit alleges is a pervasive practice in Baltimore that illegally deprives people of their equity in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Taking Clause as the city attempts to satisfy modest tax debts.
Every spring, Baltimore bureaucrats conduct a mass auction online to sell off liens like the ECO’s. Sometimes the unlucky debtors have fallen just hundreds of dollars behind on their taxes.”
https://reason.com/2024/08/19/baltimores-tax-sales-are-robbing-people-of-their-equity/