| Thanks for the detailed reply. This still seems ridiculous to me though: > [..] generally, when a mechanics lien is filed after the sale of the property, a mechanics lien may still be able to attach to the project property as long as the other requirements for the lien claim were still followed. Just why? The whole point of a lien is to be able to sell the house to raise money to pay the debt. The house is sold so now he can pay the debt. If he had so many debts that he's still underwater then the lien wouldn't have made a difference anyway, as the older debts would have to be paid first. The way I understand this, the homeowner entered a contract with a mechanic allowing the mechanic to put a lien on the property to secure the debt for the mechanic's work. Then he sold the property before they did so. It seems to me there are now a couple reasonable courses of action: Force the homeowner to pay the debt as it is no longer secured, or they could offer up something else as collateral for the debt. It makes no sense to make the new homeowners pay for the repairs for some stranger's car. That's just wrong. The only way it could possibly make sense is if they explicitly agreed to take over the debt as part of the sale. Clearly this isn't how it works in the real world, I'm just baffled at how stupid the real world is. This seems so easy to fix. The only explanation I can come up with is the insurance companies lobby to keep it this way because they make a fortune selling title insurance that doesn't even need to exist. |