John McConnin

Whether you should pay your property taxes is a tough question to answer on net.
First of all you should make sure you do not have an unusual bond which might make your county tax collector foreclose in and expedited manner.

Typically you can get a few years behind before the government in California will foreclose.
I like to tell clients property taxes are not personal debts, they are debts of the property.
So if you are letting the property go, and you are indifferent to a foreclosure or short sale, why pay?

Not paying the property taxes will make the short sale harder to close. Make sure your Realtor and Escrow officer are aware of the circumstances and see if this is going to effect the lender net. If the lenders net is effected, it may cause problems.

Generally someone is going to have to pay those taxes before the buyer takes title to the property. The lender may pay the property taxes, you may pay them, the buyer may pay them or perhaps one of the Realtors will pay them to close the deal.

If you do plan to pay them, you might want to pay them at the closing table instead of directly to the county tax collector. Why? Because the National Association of Realtors found that that most short sales fail to close. So unless you Realtor has a lengthy track record of closing short sales you should have back up strategies.

Whether you will be responsible to your lender for costs after a foreclosure is a much longer answer.

In short, talk to your tax office and then determine how much you really need to do that short sale. Paying the taxes makes the short sale more likely to happen. Your Realtor should be able to give you specifics. - Sun Nov 29 2009, 11:53