County tax lien certificate

PROPERTY TAXES

A tax lien certificate holder on land for which Arizona real property taxes were delinquent could not foreclose the rights of a competing tax lien certificate holder for different tax years on the same property.

Each holder purchased tax lien certificates for unpaid taxes in different tax years but were not required to also pay the delinquencies for other years. Although the competing tax lien certificate holders had priority over other liens, except those held by the state, neither one had priority over the other. To allow the earliest purchaser to foreclose competing liens without paying the taxes encompassed by those liens would discourage potential purchasers from paying any subsequent delinquent taxes as they accrued.

Further, a notice of foreclosure must be mailed to the property owner of record and to the county treasurer, but not to holders of other tax liens. If the legislature had intended foreclosure by one tax lienholder to extinguish all competing liens, it would have included tax lienholders among those entitled to receive notice of foreclosure. (Bauza Holdings, L.L.C. v. Primeco, Inc., Arizona Court of Appeals, Div. One, Nos. 1 CA-CV 99-0102 and 1 CA-CV 99-0296, January 25, 2001.)

Copyright Commerce Clearing House, Inc. Feb 26, 2001
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