Every month we hear a version of the same sentence: “I’d sell it, but there are back taxes on it,” or “…but my uncle’s name is still on the deed,” or “…but the neighbor says the line is in the wrong place.” The owner has been paying for or worrying about a piece of land for years because someone told them it couldn’t be sold until the problem was fixed. In most cases that is simply wrong. Problems get fixed at closing, and the money to fix them comes out of the sale.

Here is how the common ones actually work in Georgia.

Unpaid property taxes

This is the most common issue and the easiest. When you sell, the closing attorney orders a tax certificate from the county, the exact payoff including penalties and interest goes on the settlement statement, and it is paid from your proceeds before you receive the balance. You never write a check. If the taxes exceed what the land is worth — rare, but it happens with very low-value parcels — the sale may not net you anything, but it stops the bleeding and ends your liability.

The one situation that changes the picture is when the county has already sold the parcel at a tax sale. In Georgia, the original owner generally has a limited period after a tax sale to redeem the property by paying the purchaser the amount paid at the sale plus a substantial statutory premium and costs. Miss the window, and the tax-sale purchaser can foreclose your right to redeem and take clear title. If you’ve received notices about a tax sale or a “barment” of your right of redemption, that is the moment to call a real estate attorney — this week, not next month. A direct buyer can sometimes fund the redemption as part of a purchase, but only while the window is open.

A deceased owner still on the deed

A parent or grandparent died and title was never transferred. The fix depends on whether there was a will and whether probate was ever opened — we cover the full process for inherited land here. The short version: a probate attorney gets an executor or administrator appointed, or a title attorney documents the heirs and gathers their signatures. Weeks to a few months, depending on how many generations are involved. A buyer who wants the land will usually pay for this work.

Old mortgages, liens and judgments

The title search will turn up anything recorded against the property or against you personally in that county. Each has a standard resolution:

None of these stop a sale. They determine how much of the sale price you receive. The attorney lines them up on the settlement statement in priority order and pays them from the buyer’s funds at closing.

Boundary disputes and no survey

Rural Georgia deeds often describe land by old metes-and-bounds calls — “thence along the branch to a pine,” and the pine fell in 1987. A neighbor’s fence may be ten feet onto your side, or yours onto theirs. Two things to know:

• You don’t need a survey to sell. The buyer decides whether they want one. In a direct sale, if a survey is needed to close or to satisfy the title insurer, the buyer typically orders and pays for it.
• A dispute is a price factor, not a dealbreaker. A small encroachment is usually handled with a boundary line agreement signed by both neighbors and recorded, or simply disclosed and accepted. A serious dispute over significant acreage may need a quiet title action; that takes longer and a buyer will reflect it in the price.

“Cloud on title” — the catch-all

A cloud is anything that makes a title insurer nervous: a deed with a wrong legal description, a divorce where the ex-spouse never signed off, a deed signed by someone without authority, a gap in the chain of ownership. The cure depends on the cloud — a corrective deed, a quitclaim from the person with the stray interest, an affidavit, or in the hardest cases a quiet title lawsuit, where a judge declares who owns what. Quiet title actions in Georgia typically take several months. Expensive relative to a small parcel, but a buyer who wants the land badly enough will sometimes fund it and close when it’s done.

Access problems

Landlocked parcels — no deeded road frontage, reached across a neighbor’s field “the way we always have” — can be sold. Georgia recognizes certain implied and prescriptive rights of access, and a recorded easement from a neighbor can often be negotiated for a reasonable payment. Access problems lower the price; they don’t make the land unsellable. We buy landlocked parcels regularly and treat the easement as part of the work.

What the problem does to your price

Be realistic. A direct buyer who takes on a problem parcel is buying the land and the job of fixing it. The price reflects both the cost of the cure (attorney fees, survey, lien payoffs, time) and the risk that the cure takes longer or costs more than expected. What you give up in price, you get back in not spending the next two years and several thousand dollars of your own money trying to clear it yourself — with no guarantee a buyer appears at the end.

The other side of that: a buyer should be able to explain exactly what they are deducting and why. If you get an offer on a problem parcel, ask for the breakdown. If they can’t give you one, they haven’t done the work.

The one thing that does kill deals

Not disclosing. The title search finds the lien. The tax certificate shows the arrears. The neighbor mentions the fence at the survey. When a problem surfaces in week three that you knew about in week one, the buyer stops trusting everything else you told them, and the deal usually dies or gets re-traded hard. Tell us up front. We’ve seen every one of these. Nothing on this page surprises us; being surprised is the only thing that does.

If you’ve got a parcel with a problem attached, tell us what it is. We’ll tell you whether it’s a week, a month, or a lawsuit — and what we’d pay with the problem included.