How to place a lien on someones property by buying their debts?

Question

I was wondering if anyone could answer this for me. I know that you can legally purchase another persons debt and then file a lien against their physical property. I'm wondering if anyone knows how exactly you go about this? How would you go about searching and finding debt someone owes? Are there only certain debts this can be done with? For example if someone owes a utility company could you buy a debt like that? I live in new york state if it varries by state. When i purchased my home it was a forclosed property. Unfortunately the way the neighborhood is set up it has 2 physical addresses and when the home was foreclosed on only the one address was listed. Meaning my yard wasn't part of the purchase. i wouldn't come to know this till a year after i bought this house. When taxes came out previous owners realised it was theirs and sold it . So I want to purchase debts of the current owner and place a lien in hopes of just getting the property back.

Answer 1

You can buy a debt; but the only way to get a lien is by bringing suit on the debt. So you've gotta pay the lawyers' fees & court costs & then you've gotta be successful in the suit.

Answer 2

Yeah, right!

That's what you get for not paying attention to what you're signing when you buy property. Had you looked at the survey it would have been obvious what you were getting. The adjacent plot probably wasn't on the mortgage originally either due to oversight by the lender or was purchased separately, so you had no right to it in the first place.

Plots of land are not recorded by street address, but by legal description. The street address may be included for ease of locating the property but the street address doesn't describe the property for legal purposes.

Although some creditors will sell bad debts, those are done in blocks. You don't get to pick and choose which ones. So, go ahead and buy a few million-dollar blocks of bad debt and hope for the best. Just don't whine if you get stuck with the proverbial ping in a poke. You'd be lucky if there was a debt from the current owner there in the first place and they can derail your evil plan by simply paying the debt.

In the long run it will be a lot cheaper if you just ask the new owner if they'd like to sell the land.