Unpaid property tax comes before everyone

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The same material, read aloud and told more loosely than it is written. Nothing is said in it that this page does not also say.

Why the tax lien jumps the queue

Priority here is not a race to the recorder. It is a rank the statute assigns by category, and the tax category sits above everything else.

Florida property taxes are a first lien, superior to all other liens, on the property assessed. Fla. Stat. 197.122¹ says exactly that, and the lien runs from January 1 of the year the taxes were levied until the taxes are paid or barred under chapter 95. So the date on a mortgage does not enter the comparison. Recorded years earlier or not, a mortgage ranks below the current year's unpaid tax on the same parcel because the statute puts it there, not because anyone filed late.

A judgment reaches the same parcel by a slower route. It becomes a lien on Florida land only when a certified copy is recorded in that county's official records or judgment lien record, and only if the judgment states the lienholder's address or a separate affidavit stating that address is recorded with it at the same time, under Fla. Stat. 55.10². Even then it takes a number behind the tax. Those taxes run on their own calendar: due on November 1, delinquent on April 1 of the next year, or 60 days after the tax notice was mailed if that is later, under Fla. Stat. 197.333³.

Homestead does not help here either. Florida's constitutional homestead protection does not reach the payment of taxes and assessments on the property, under Fla. Const. art. X, sec. 4⁴. And the rule reaches up into federal law. Even a filed federal tax lien is not valid against the holder of a lien for a general property tax based on the property's value, where local law ranks that lien ahead of earlier security interests, under 26 U.S.C. 6323(b)(6)⁵. Federal collection steps behind the county assessor.

When the property sells inside a case, the tax is paid off the top. In Florida a court officer selling under process or court order pays due and unpaid taxes from the proceeds, after costs and any allowed attorney fee, when the order or process directs it, under Fla. Stat. 197.217⁶. New York runs the same way at a foreclosure sale: the officer pays from the proceeds all taxes, assessments and water rates that are liens on the property, under RPAPL 1354(2)⁷. So the tax is settled before the money gets anywhere near the mortgage.

Certificates and deeds are two stages, not two systems

In Florida a certificate and a deed are not rival paths. The certificate is sold first, and a deed may follow years later, both under one chapter.

When taxes go delinquent, the tax collector advertises and sells tax certificates on all real property with delinquent taxes, subject to an exception in section 197.432(4), under Fla. Stat. 197.402⁸. Each certificate goes to the bidder who will pay the taxes, interest, costs and charges and accept the lowest rate of interest, up to the maximum, under Fla. Stat. 197.432⁹. That maximum is 18 percent a year, under Fla. Stat. 197.172¹⁰. One that nobody buys is struck to the county at that maximum rate, under Fla. Stat. 197.432. And the lien a certificate creates may be enforced only as chapter 197 prescribes, under Fla. Stat. 197.122, so none of the ordinary foreclosure routes apply to it.

An owner has room to pay. Redemption of a certificate is open at any time after it is issued and before a tax deed issues, unless full payment for the deed has already been made to the clerk, under Fla. Stat. 197.472¹¹. The holder's window to force the sale opens later: from 2 years after April 1 of the year of issue, the holder may apply for a tax deed, under Fla. Stat. 197.502¹². Sit with no application and no other proceeding of record, and the certificate is canceled 7 years after issue, under Fla. Stat. 197.482¹³. A lien that waits too long dies on its own.

On an application the clerk records a notice of tax deed application in the official records, under Fla. Stat. 197.502, and then the clerk of the circuit court sells the property at public auction, under Fla. Stat. 197.542¹⁴. The certificateholder may bid like anyone present, and the property goes to the highest bidder. With no higher bid, it is struck off to the certificateholder. On property assessed as homestead, the opening bid adds one-half of the latest assessed value of the homestead, under Fla. Stat. 197.502, which raises the floor on exactly the properties people most want. In Broward County, one division handles the Official Records and runs the tax deed auctions.

A tax deed is close to a clean slate. No right or interest survives it except as chapter 197 provides, though a municipal, county, special district or community development district lien of record that was not satisfied from the sale proceeds survives, under Fla. Stat. 197.552¹⁵. Government keeps its place even here. Land that no one buys goes on a list of lands available for taxes, and 3 years after it was offered it escheats to the county free and clear, with all certificates, taxes and liens on it canceled as a matter of law, under Fla. Stat. 197.502.

Other states run their own calendars

Maryland reaches the same end by a different road, and West Virginia's version cannot be described here with any precision.

Maryland sells the lien, not the land, at first. Its collector must sell property on which the tax is in arrears, except land a municipality or county has transferred to a land bank authority under 1-1403 and except as 14-811 provides, under Md. Code, Tax-Prop. 14-808¹⁶, at public auction to the highest good faith bidder, under Md. Code, Tax-Prop. 14-817¹⁷. Property cannot sell for less than the certified taxes with interest, penalties and sale expenses, and the lien for those amounts passes to the purchaser. The purchaser does not get a deed yet.

To finish, a holder files to foreclose the right of redemption: at any time after 6 months from the sale, or 9 months for owner-occupied residential property, under Md. Code, Tax-Prop. 14-833¹⁸. First there are notices to the last-listed owner and to the current mortgagee, assignee or servicer, with the complaint held back at least 2 months after the first and 30 days after the second, under the same section. The right to redeem continues until a circuit court decree bars it. And the certificate is void unless a foreclosure proceeding is filed within 2 years of its date, under Md. Code, Tax-Prop. 14-833. After the final decree and payment of the balance plus accruing taxes, the collector delivers a deed, under Md. Code, Tax-Prop. 14-818¹⁹, and any surplus goes to the person entitled to it or to a court if the distribution is disputed.

West Virginia is not covered here. Its certification and sale of delinquent taxes run under a chapter that is not in front of this writer, so the comparison stops at the state line rather than guessing at what a purchaser there receives. For how a lien's rank is fixed by the filing act and the date in the general case, see priority by recording date.

Reading a delinquency list

The published list before the sale is readable line by line, and each line is one parcel and one unpaid bill.

Before the certificate sale a Florida tax collector advertises the delinquent real property once a week for 3 weeks, under Fla. Stat. 197.402. That list runs in the order the properties were assessed and gives, for each parcel, the amount due, including interest at 18 percent a year from delinquency to the sale, the cost of advertising and the expense of sale. Read in that order, it is not a ranking of anything. It is the assessment order with a dollar figure beside each parcel.

After the sale a second record appears. The list of tax certificates sold shows each certificate's sale date, number, owner as returned, property description, purchaser, interest rate bid and amount, under Fla. Stat. 197.432. So one line carries the owner as returned, the amount, who bought the certificate and the rate. Broward's Property Appraiser tells owners the plain version: taxes unpaid by April 1 of the following year lead the Tax Collector's Office to sell a tax certificate to an investor.

A delinquency as a signal, not a verdict

An unpaid tax bill is a reason to read the records on a property closely. It is not proof of anything about the owner.

There is a formal way to pull the figures. Each year, by May 1, a mortgagee, lienholder or contract-for-deed vendee who files a description of the encumbered property with the tax collector and pays a $2 charge may request the delinquent taxes and certificates on it, under Fla. Stat. 197.344²⁰. And if a tax deed is applied for, any lienholder of record is among the people notified before the sale, if an address appears on the recorded lien, under Fla. Stat. 197.502. An address on the lien is doing quiet work: without it, the notice may never arrive.

The recorded notice of tax deed application does the rest. Anyone who acquires an interest after it is recorded is deemed on notice of the pending sale, under Fla. Stat. 197.502. What a delinquency means for any particular claim still depends on facts this page cannot see. A state revenue warrant is a different senior claim with its own rules, covered in state tax warrants as senior claims.

Nobody writing this is a lawyer and none of it is advice. Whether a given mortgage, judgment or other claim stands above or below the tax line on one parcel, and how close that parcel is to a tax deed, is a question for counsel reading those records. What a page can do is narrower. It can tell you that the newest bill on the property may be the first one paid, and that the date on your lien is not the date that decides it.