Sell House With Liens Memphis — We Buy Houses With Tax Liens, Judgments, and Code Violations for Cash

A lien is a claim against the property, not a wall around it. You can still sell a house that has one — the lien just has to be satisfied or released before the deed transfers, and on a cash sale that happens at closing out of the sale proceeds. So if you want to sell a house with liens in Memphis quietly and quickly, with nothing paid up front, here is how it goes.

Step 1: Tell Us About the House and What You Know Is Against It

Call us at (901) 763-6616 or fill out the form on this page. Give us the address, the rough condition, and whatever you know: how far behind the taxes are, whether a creditor sued you, whether there is an HOA, whether a code inspector has been out. You do not need paperwork and you do not need to be right — the title search is what settles it.

Step 2: Get a No-Obligation Cash Offer Within 24 Hours

We price the house on its current condition and on recent sales near you, then put a firm number in writing. No appraisal, no financing contingency, no inspection period that reopens the deal two weeks later. We will not send you a repair list or ask you to reach code compliance first — the violations become our problem after closing.

Step 3: Title Searches It, We Close, the Liens Get Paid

A local title company searches the Shelby County Register's Office, orders a payoff from each lienholder, and clears title. At closing the mortgage payoff, delinquent taxes, judgment liens, HOA assessments and any city costs riding on the tax bill are paid from the proceeds, and you keep the rest. We close in as little as 7 days on clean title and pay the closing costs. None of this is legal advice — it is how these files usually run.

Liens on Shelby County houses generally fall into a few buckets, and they behave very differently at closing — which is why title needs to find all of them early, not the week of funding.

Delinquent Property Tax Liens

Tennessee makes property taxes a lien automatically. Under T.C.A. § 67-5-2101, taxes assessed by the state, a county or a municipality, plus all penalties, interest and costs, "become and remain a first lien upon such property from January 1 of the year for which such taxes are assessed." Nobody records anything for it to exist, and it outranks nearly everything else.

Judgment Liens

A creditor who sues you and wins does not automatically get a lien on your house. Under T.C.A. § 25-5-101 the judgment becomes a lien on the debtor's land only "from the time a certified copy of the judgment or decree shall be registered in the lien book in the register's office of the county where the land is located." In Shelby County that is the Register of Deeds on Mullins Station Road, which records deeds, mortgages, quit claims, court decrees, affidavits of heirship and liens. Once it is registered, T.C.A. § 25-5-105 gives that lien the time remaining in a ten-year period measured from the entry of the final judgment.

HOA and Condominium Assessment Liens

If the house is a condo, the Tennessee Condominium Act of 2008 gives the association a lien "on a unit for any assessment levied against that unit or fines imposed against its unit owner from the time the assessment or fine becomes due" (T.C.A. § 66-27-415). It sits ahead of most claims, but not ahead of liens recorded before the declaration, a first mortgage recorded before the assessment went delinquent, or real estate taxes. For a non-condo association the authority comes from the recorded declaration instead, so that is the document title will want.

City Costs, Mortgages, and Everything Else

Code-enforcement costs often do not look like a lien until you pull a tax bill: the City of Memphis states that if a condemned structure is demolished by the City, "the amount of the demolition is assessed against the property taxes where the structure was located." Deeds of trust, home-equity lines, contractor liens, child-support liens and federal tax liens turn up too. Each needs its own payoff and its own release — ordinary title work that takes time.

Back taxes have a timeline of their own, and it runs on two calendars — Memphis city taxes and Shelby County taxes go delinquent on different dates.

Two Delinquency Dates, One Interest Rate

Shelby County taxes are due and payable the first Monday of October, the payment deadline is the last day of February, and they go delinquent March 1. City of Memphis taxes go delinquent September 1. Both then accrue 1.5% interest each month, or 18% a year, on the unpaid balance. Bartlett and Germantown run their own tiered interest-and-penalty schedules on top of a March 1 delinquency date, which matters if the house is in a suburb rather than the city.

When It Becomes a Lawsuit

Delinquent taxes do not sit still. T.C.A. § 67-5-2405 directs the delinquent tax attorney to file judicial actions, not later than the last business day of March, for the delinquent taxes “as well as the interest and costs attached to and a part of the taxes” — and those costs “must include all expenses authorized by law or by the court, including attorney fees.” The Shelby County Trustee publishes the resulting Delinquent Realty Lawsuit List each year; the 2024 delinquent real estate taxes were included in a lawsuit filed March 31, 2026. Once your parcel is in that suit the file runs on the court's schedule rather than yours — the same statute tells the court to give these cases priority and prosecute them to a conclusion as soon as practicable.

The Tax Sale Itself

The Chancery Court Clerk & Master's Office conducts the public auctions for delinquent real estate property taxes in Shelby County, covering the City of Memphis, the county, and the municipalities within it. Effective April 2024 those sales moved online — they are held by SRI through ZeusAuction.com rather than in a courtroom.

How Long the Redemption Window Runs

If a parcel does sell, there is a right of redemption — but the clock does not start at the auction. Under T.C.A. § 67-5-2701 a right to redeem vests when the court enters the order confirming the sale, and the window depends on how far behind the taxes ran: one year if the delinquency was five years or less, 180 days if it was more than five but less than eight years, 90 days at eight years or more, and only 30 days for property the court finds vacant and abandoned. Redeeming is not automatic either. You file a Motion to Redeem Property from Tax Sale with the Chancery Court Clerk's office and pay the final bid price plus interest, which runs up to 12% a year to the tax-sale purchaser, and the Shelby County Trustee's office states plainly that it “does not take part in the redemption procedure.”

None of this is legal advice. Redemption deadlines turn on the specific court file, and only the Chancery Court record controls the dates in yours.

What That Means for a Sale

All of it gets paid from your proceeds at closing, in one wire, by the title company. You do not have to catch the taxes up first. Tell us early if a suit has already been filed, because a file that has reached Chancery Court runs on its own schedule. If a mortgage sale date is also in play, read how to stop foreclosure in Memphis and call the same day.

A lien is a number; a code case is a court date. The good news is that the case is attached to the property, and a buyer taking it as-is takes the problem with it.

How a Case Starts

Inside the city, violations are reported through 311 or the Mayor's Citizen Service Center at (901) 636-6500, and the Department of Housing / Code Enforcement takes complaints directly at (901) 636-7464. In unincorporated Shelby County it runs through the County Mayor's Action Center at (901) 222-2300 and Construction Code Enforcement at (901) 222-8300. The City's Code Enforcement department administers Ordinance No. 5708, the International Property Maintenance Code as adopted for Memphis, and names abandoned houses and vehicles, structural defects in dwellings, and appliances or junk stored on the property as the common complaints it receives. Overgrown lots are a separate lane: Grounds Services, a different department in the City's Division of Community Enhancement, enforces the high weeds and grass ordinance on vacant, privately owned properties with grass twelve inches or higher. An inspector writes a violation order, then comes back.

Environmental Court

If the violation is not corrected, the case is heard in the Shelby County Environmental Court, which sits in the Walter L. Bailey, Jr. Criminal Justice Center at 201 Poplar Avenue in downtown Memphis. The court tells its own history plainly: in 1983 the City of Memphis created it, with Judge Larry E. Potter as its first judge. It describes itself as the court of original jurisdiction for all violations of Shelby County ordinances, and it hears health, fire, building, zoning and animal code cases along with matters brought under the state Abatement of Nuisances Statute and the Neighborhood Preservation Act. Its stated aim is to achieve compliance and, as a result, create a safer and more livable environment — which is why a sale to a buyer who will actually fix the property is a result it can work with.

Condemnation, Demolition, and the Neighborhood Preservation Act

For a structure the City considers unsafe, condemnation follows a published path. It begins with a title search. Every appropriate party is then notified by certified mail with a “First Notice” that the structure must be repaired or demolished. If that order is not complied with, certified mail goes out again setting a condemnation hearing before the Condemnation Review Officer, where a party may petition for an extension to make repairs. Once the structure is condemned, interested parties are notified they have 30 calendar days to demolish it or the City will proceed — and if the City does the demolition, the amount is assessed against the property taxes where the structure was located. That is how a code file quietly becomes a tax lien. Badly neglected vacant property can also be referred under the Tennessee Neighborhood Preservation Act, T.C.A. § 13-6-101 et seq.; Memphis Code Enforcement's Special Operations unit handles board-ups, court-ordered demolitions and those referrals, and where nothing else abates the nuisance the court may authorize a receiver to take possession and control of the parcel under a plan.

Selling Into an Open Case

We buy houses with open code files, open Environmental Court cases, boarded windows, condemnation placards and overgrown lots, in Memphis and out in the county. We do not ask you to mow it, clean it out, or appear anywhere on our behalf. Costs already assessed to the parcel come out of the closing, and the compliance work becomes ours.

No. A recorded lien does not have to be satisfied before you can accept an offer or sign a contract.

Liens are paid at closing, not before it. The title company collects a written payoff from each lienholder, the settlement statement lists them line by line, and the funds go out of the sale proceeds on the day of closing. You are not asked to bring money to the table and you are not asked to clear anything first.

What If the Liens Add Up to More Than the House Is Worth?

Then the file becomes a negotiation instead of a straight closing. Mortgage debt over value is a short sale, where the lender is asked to accept less than the full balance and release its lien anyway. Judgment creditors and HOAs can take a discounted release at closing rather than hold paper that only pays when a sale happens. That work takes longer than a seven-day cash closing, so the earlier you call, the more room there is to do it.

What If I Am Not Sure What Is Even Recorded?

The title search will surface it anyway. Tell us what you know and we will walk you through the payoff picture before you sign anything. For a plain-English comparison of your options first, read our guide on how to sell a house as-is in Memphis.

When you sell a house with liens in Memphis, two numbers decide what you walk away with, and we will show you both.

The first is what the house is worth in its current condition to a buyer paying cash and doing the repairs. We build that from recent sales near you and from what the property actually needs — roof, mechanicals, foundation, the code items, and how much is deferred maintenance versus real structural work. That number is the offer, and it goes in writing.

The second is the total recorded against the parcel: mortgage payoff, back taxes with interest and any court costs, judgment liens, HOA assessments, and city costs riding on the tax account. Subtract that from the offer and you have your walk-away figure. We will not promise a percentage of market value or a dollar amount on a web page, because anyone who does is guessing about your house.

What we will promise is that the written offer is the number the closing statement pays out, minus what is owed on the property — no commission, no service fee, no repair credits invented at the last minute. If the liens swallow the equity, we will say so on the first call. For context on how many Shelby County owners are working through distress at any moment, our quarterly Shelby County Foreclosure Report tracks filings straight out of the Register of Deeds' public records.

These answers describe how these files usually run in Shelby County. None of it is legal advice, and nothing here sets, extends, or preserves a deadline in your case.

Liens and code cases only get more expensive with time — delinquent tax interest accrues at 1.5% every month (18% a year), the statute attaches interest and costs to the taxes once suit is filed, and a City demolition is assessed against the property taxes. The fastest thing you can do today is find out what the house is worth to a buyer who will take it with every problem attached. That call costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

Call (901) 763-6616 or fill out the form on this page and we will have a written, no-obligation cash offer to you within 24 hours. We buy across the county, including we buy houses germantown tn, we buy houses bartlett tn, sell my house fast collierville tn, we buy houses lakeland tn, sell my house fast midtown tn, sell my house fast east memphis tn, sell my house fast berclair memphis tn, and sell my house fast cordova tn. To learn more about how we work, visit the As-Is Home Buyer homepage.