Since you have some experience with this why not just put a lien on the property for the taxes owed (along with interest & penalties)? As long it's a small per

Since you have some experience with this why not just put a lien on the property for the taxes owed (along with interest & penalties)? As long it's a small percentage of the property value the city would be almost guaranteed to be made whole eventually (by selling the home when the tax debt reaches a threshold % of the property value). I understand why they might want to have a different process for vacant/unmaintained properties, but in the article it looks like this is happening to occupied properties in good condition (or even actively under construction)! I also don't understand why it's appropriate to keep the whole house value after auction, even when it's 100x (or in some examples in the article 1000x) the taxes owed and the owner is known. There's other stuff in the article where it seems like the local governments deliberately want to avoid the owner discovering their tax liability. For example they make the current year's tax bill not mention any existing tax debt (which may be from a different owner). In one example the county treasurer calls the owner of a new home under construction only *after" the deadline, just to tell them that they've been waiting out the clock on the tax debt of a previous owner, and they plan to seize the house and refuse any payment on the balance! I don't see the public interest in this aside from trying to turn communication issues into huge financial windfalls for local governments (due to asset confiscation), with the perverse incentive that the party responsible for notifying people gets the windfall if that process fails.