Man owed $134 in property taxes. The District sold the lien to an investor who foreclosed

[liberalhistorian]

40. That's what I thought and that's what doesn't make

sense to me. I used to be a real estate paralegal and I know that when an entity forecloses on a home, it is only permitted to recoup the amount it's owed plus any reasonable fees and penalties, period. It does NOT "own" the home itself. This is why every single lienholder of a property must be named as defendants in a foreclosure suit, so that they will also receive what is owed them out of the proceeds of the sale. Maybe the owner had other liens on the property that also had to be paid upon the sale of the home? Because there is no way that that investor would be owed $197,000 from just a fucking $134 tax bill. NO. WAY. There's either more to the story or there were other lien holders.

I personally, having seen what I saw in my previous work and hating most foreclosures because of it (the real human cost became too much to bear, all for the sake of the callous greed of lenders/lien holders), do not believe any entity should be permitted to foreclose on a home for any amount less than half of the home's value, period. I've seen homes foreclosed on for a lousy $200 mechanic's lien, with the homeowners getting nothing by the time the mortgages and all other liens were paid, and for various liens of even less than that, and it is BULLSHIT.