Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Sold home but taxes are still in my name

wasn't this done through an escrow or title company --- and if it wans or even if it was you need a very good attorney with expetise in real estate transactional/ litagation law yeseterday to try to unscramble the egg and help unscrew all the screwups you have done or let done to you ----

Re: Sold home but taxes are still in my name

Well, there are several possibilities here.

First, the speed, efficiency and mechanics of county governments differ with respect to re-assessing properties after sale. I have personally received bills for taxes on properties I no longer owned. A call to the county treasurer/tax collector drew an admission that they were months behind in updating the tax rolls due to the budget crunch and lack of personnel. However, that wouldn't explain a delay of four years.

Another good possibility is that whoever handled the closing of the transaction in which you sold your house didn't handle it properly. For example, maybe the deed was never recorded. Or, if the recorder in that county also obtains a tax-transfer information sheet from the party requesting the recording of a deed, maybe the transfer form wasn't requested, wasn't provided, or if provided, was filled out wrong, processed wrong, or something like that.

So, I would check to make sure the deed was properly recorded and properly indexed.

If this was some kind of an amateur transaction, without benefit of a title company or licensed real-estate professionals representing each party, I would recommend retaining a local real-estate lawyer to investigate the entire deal. How did you get paid when you "sold" this house? Was or is there any financing on it? How did that get handled? How about title insurance?

Note: If you mean the new owner won't "put the property in his name" for TITLE purposes (as opposed to TAX purposes), there would even be doubt that the property was "sold" in 2001.

If you pay the taxes to protect your credit or because you took back a loan, you would be entitled to reimbursement. Payment of taxes doesn't give you any ownership interest unless you are in adverse possession of the house.