Tax Liens Trigger More Foreclosures

When Elsa Dabreo inherited a house from her late father, she thought it was the best thing that ever happened to her. But now she is struggling to keep it.

The house, in a suburb of Boston, was mortgage free and valued at about $330,000 when she received the deed in 2005. However, it was saddled with $20,000 in back taxes which Ms. Dabreo, now 54 years old, couldn’t pay. In 2010, after the taxes and penalties had ballooned to $42,000, the city of Weymouth, Mass., sold the debt at a tax-lien auction. If Ms. Dabreo can’t pay the debt, she could be subject to foreclosure.

Relatives advised her to sell the home and pay off the debt, but she refused. “I wouldn’t be honoring my father’s memory if I sold the home that he worked so hard to buy,” said Ms. Dabreo, a former child-care worker who is now unemployed. She recently filed for bankruptcy and hopes to keep living in the home—which has fallen in value to $296,000.

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