Asklemmy

If you don’t pay your taxes, yes

My property tax is $1200 a year. Failure to pay that for a while (a year or three) could result in the state selling the house, keeping the overdue taxes, and paying me the rest (if there is any. Sometimes they get sold cheap).

The state can also buy my house from me under eminent domain, to put in a rail line, or power lines, or some other utility. They'd owe me "fair value" for it, but they basically determine what that means, and it could be significantly less than what i could sell it in the market for (but to be fair, taxes are based on "fair value", and almost everyone quietly allows the state to low-ball their property value because of this).

It can also be condemned. If it's egregiously not maintained and shows obvious signs of structural issues, or the property gets hoarded up and looks like a trash dump. This is much more common with commercial property.

There's also civil asset forfeiture. If you're manufacturing and/or selling drugs/weapons/etc. (as a random example. Any crime counts really) on a property, it can be seized outright with no requisite compensation at all.

HOAs ar often described as similar to asset forfeiture, but they're closer to a tax siezure. The HOA has to have in its charter that they can fine members for rule violations, and the process for an HOA is the same as for overdue taxes, but with unpaid fines. The authority for HOA is entirely contractual, you have to sign a contract agreeing to those rules.

All of these are incredibly rare occurrences, and usually involve some sort of genesis, like an investor wants a specific property, neighbors hate someone, etc.

Yes. It happened to my friends. They both lost their jobs and couldn't pay the property tax on their fully paid-off house, so it was foreclosed and auctioned off.

One thing to keep in mind is that in the US, there's very few people or companies that actually own the land that they're on. Most of the time you have the rights to use the land for certain types of things, but not actually own it. The US government (federal on down) has various ways of seizing property for its own purposes.

There's only a handful of people who actually own the land they live on. Most of them were granted the land by prior governments (mostly Spain) before the US was a country. Their ownership was grandfathered in and has passed via inheritance through the families. Several of those family plots are in Texas and Florida. Everyone else is just allowed to stay as long as they play ball with the rules.

You can get eminent domain'd or your house could be destroyed by natural disaster, house fire, etc.

Yep, you only think you own your home after it's paid off. Try missing a single property tax.

Theoretically eminent domain still exists but it’s only used to replace black neighborhoods with highways

Absolutely. You have to pay taxes on your property (in most states; there may be exceptions that I'm not aware of). If you don't pay your taxes for a long enough period of time, your property will be seized and auctioned off. Starting bids on property auctions are usually the back taxes; in less desirable areas--such as undeveloped land that with no utilities that's out in the middle of nowhere--that may be all it costs.

Yes.

This was the whole premise of Happy Gilmore. He became a pro golfer to save his grandma's house

A common way that I don't see mentioned here is that it is common to take out a loan using your home as collateral, something like a major business loan not panning out or a mismanaged personal loan can absolutely end up letting the bank seize your house to pay off the loan.

Eminent domain baybee

Oh, also if you're under investigation for anything, the cops can just confiscate your house, car, possessions, whatever. Even if you're found not guilty, you don't get anything they took back. Typically it will get sold at a discount, typically to a cop. You'll often see them on twitter taking pictures with their fancy new car that they dragged someone out of a month ago. It's called asset forfeiture, and iirc It's the second or third most prevalent from of theft in America, wage theft being the first.

If you fall behind on your property taxes, the local taxing authority can foreclosure on the property.

You can be shot by the cops, in your bed, while asleep. Yes I think you can lose your paid-off house.

There are typically property taxes you have to pay every year, unless exempt

I feel like you had additional context to this question that you meant to add, but just totally forgot.

As it stands, yes of course. If your house in condemned or otherwise subject to eminent domain, if your house is seized to pay creditors for non-mortgage debt (in some states), if somebody else has superior title to your home and you aren’t protected by being a bonafide purchaser, etc.

Yes, if a large meteor landed on it, it would probably be destroyed.

Yes https://lemmy.ca/post/10670789

I used to see stories in the legaladvice subreddit regularly about Housing Owner Associations putting legitimate liens on properties for not following the rules. Even when the rules were as ridiculous as "air-conditioning unit can't be visible from the street" or "only these specific plants can be grown and your lawn cannot exceed a few inches in height and must always be green" or "internal curtains must be pink or white".

For a culture that prides itself on its freedoms, the miniature authoritarian regimes that HOAs embody are a great example of the evidence not matching the story.

Every country pretty much. Lawsuit. Don't pay taxes. Owe money to someone personally. You don't get to hide your assets behind a home and get into financial trouble in other areas.

This is also why homeowners typically live within the law. Too much to loose.

This is America, what do you think?

Sure. If your HOA does not like you, they will use your own money to pay lawyers against you, to dispossess you of your house. 'Murica!