Did you know that your county government can sell your delinquent property-tax debt to a private investor?
The county gets paid. The investor gets the right to collect the debt, charge interest, and potentially foreclose on your home.
You can start with a property-tax bill you cannot afford and end up fighting to keep the roof over your head while a private company makes money from your hardship.
That is what is happening in Ohio.
I recently spoke with Jasson Farrier, the Ohio Housing Nerd, about Ohio’s property-tax crisis and the private companies buying delinquent tax certificates from county governments.
Jasson is a realtor and real-estate investor who has spent months investigating property-tax delinquencies across Ohio. He is trying to answer a basic question: If so many Ohioans are falling behind on their property taxes, where are all the tax foreclosures?
The answer, at least in some counties, is that the county has already been paid.
The homeowner’s debt has been sold.
The County Gets Paid. The Homeowner Gets a Private Collector.
When a homeowner falls behind on property taxes, the county still needs that revenue. Property taxes fund schools, social services, public safety, and other local government operations.
Ohio law gives counties several ways to collect delinquent taxes. One of those options is selling tax certificates to private investors.
Under Ohio Revised Code Section 5721.32, county treasurers may sell tax certificates individually or in massive blocks. Once the investor pays the county, the state’s superior lien for those unpaid taxes is transferred to the certificate holder.
To be clear, the company does not immediately receive the deed to the house. It receives the tax lien and the legal right to collect the debt. If the homeowner does not redeem the certificate or comply with a payment plan, the certificate holder can eventually initiate foreclosure proceedings.
In a public tax-certificate auction, bidding begins at an interest rate of 18 percent and moves downward, with the certificate going to the bidder offering the lowest rate. Counties can also negotiate bulk sales under separate provisions of Ohio law.
In June 2026, Cuyahoga County sold approximately $18 million in delinquent property-tax debt to NAR Solutions, a company based in Omaha, Nebraska. Cuyahoga County’s own tax-certificate website directs homeowners whose certificates were sold in 2026 to contact NAR Ohio.
This happened under County Executive Chris Ronayne’s administration after Cuyahoga County had gone years without conducting one of these bulk sales.
From the county’s perspective, the appeal is obvious. The county converts delinquent accounts into immediate revenue. The taxing districts get paid, and the county no longer has to wait for thousands of individual homeowners to catch up.
But the debt does not disappear.
It changes hands.
The struggling homeowner is now dealing with a private company whose financial interest is not merely collecting the original taxes. The company purchased an investment, and it expects a return.
A Small Tax Debt Can Become an Impossible Bill
Cuyahoga County already imposes a 10 percent late-payment penalty, along with annual interest that the county currently lists at 12 percent.
When a tax certificate is sold, Ohio law permits certificate interest rates reaching as high as 18 percent. Interest is only part of the problem. A foreclosure can bring attorney fees, court costs, administrative charges, and other expenses.
Meanwhile, the homeowner continues receiving new property-tax bills.
That is how a manageable delinquency can become an impossible debt.
Jasson ran a hypothetical example involving a homeowner who initially fell behind by $2,000. Depending on the penalties, interest, additional taxes, and foreclosure expenses, he estimated that the amount could grow beyond $7,000.
That is an illustration, not a universal calculation. The exact amount depends on the county, the certificate terms, the length of the delinquency, and whether a foreclosure is filed. But the underlying danger is real.
Jasson has seen it personally.
Years ago, he sat in the living room of a woman who contacted him about selling her house. Her tax debt had been acquired by TaxEase, another company involved in Ohio tax-certificate sales. According to the documents she showed him, her debt had grown to approximately $28,000 on a house worth around $80,000 at the time.
She told him she could not pay it.
She was prepared to walk away.
It is easy to call these “delinquent accounts” when they are presented in a spreadsheet containing thousands of properties. It is harder when you are sitting across from a person who has concluded that there is no way to save her home.
How Many Ohioans Are Behind?
Jasson used PropStream, a proprietary real-estate data service, to estimate the number of Ohio properties with delinquent taxes.
His most recent statewide search returned approximately 569,000 properties.
That number requires an important qualification. It is not an official statewide count produced by the Ohio Department of Taxation, and PropStream does not provide Jasson with a reliable historical series showing the same data over previous years.
His May search returned approximately 350,000 properties. The number jumped above 500,000 in June and remained near that level in July. That abrupt increase could reflect tax-payment schedules, reporting delays, changes in the underlying records, or a genuine increase in delinquency.
We do not have enough information yet to know.
Jasson is now recording the results every month so he can build a consistent history. Until that history exists, 569,000 should be understood as a snapshot from a private database, not a verified count of individual Ohio homeowners facing immediate foreclosure.
Even with that limitation, we know the problem is growing.
In Cuyahoga County, delinquent property-tax balances increased by $60.6 million following the countywide property reappraisal. County officials projected that unpaid taxes could create a $20 million hole in Health and Human Services levy reserves.
That creates a real budget problem.
But selling the debt to a private investor does not solve the homeowner’s financial crisis. It simply gives the county its money and moves the collection problem somewhere else.
The Supreme Court Just Put More Home Equity at Risk
The United States Supreme Court recently ruled in a case involving a Michigan family that owed $2,241.93 in property taxes.
Isabella County foreclosed on the family’s home. The property, which had been assessed at $194,400 for tax purposes, sold at a public auction for $76,008.
In Pung v. Isabella County, the homeowners argued that compensation should reflect the home’s fair market value, not merely the amount generated at the tax auction.
On June 23, 2026, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected that argument.
The Court ruled that when a tax-foreclosed property is sold through a fairly conducted auction, the former homeowner is generally entitled to the surplus remaining from the auction proceeds after the taxes and allowable expenses are paid. The Constitution does not automatically require the government to compensate the homeowner based on a separate estimate of fair market value.
The Court did not say that a government can secretly dump a house for any price it wants. The auction must still be conducted fairly, and the justices sent the case back to the lower courts for further consideration of that issue.
But the practical result remains disturbing.
A government can assess a home at nearly $200,000 for taxation, sell it for $76,008 through a tax auction, collect what it is owed, and calculate the homeowner’s remaining equity from the auction price rather than the government’s own valuation.
Who benefits from the difference?
The purchaser who acquired the property at auction.
There was also an important error in our original conversation that needs to be corrected. We said Ohio tax-foreclosure auctions generally must begin at two-thirds of the property’s appraised value. That is not universally true for tax foreclosures.
Under Ohio Revised Code Section 5721.19, a court may order a tax-delinquent parcel sold without an appraisal. The minimum can be based on the lesser of the county auditor’s fair-market valuation plus costs or the total taxes, penalties, interest, charges, and foreclosure costs owed.
In other words, Ohio law does not guarantee that every tax-foreclosed home will begin at two-thirds of its appraised value.
That makes this problem even more serious.
The Investor Does Not Automatically Get the House
There is another distinction worth making.
Buying a tax certificate does not mean a company immediately receives a house for pennies on the dollar. The company purchases the lien. If the homeowner does not pay, the certificate holder may request foreclosure under Ohio Revised Code Section 5721.37.
For most private certificate holders, a foreclosure request may be filed beginning one year after the certificate was sold, subject to the certificate’s terms and other legal requirements.
The foreclosure can ultimately result in the property being sold or, in certain proceedings, title being vested in the certificate holder or another purchaser.
That distinction matters because we should describe this system accurately.
It does not make the system acceptable.
A private company may not receive the deed on the day it buys the certificate, but it receives a superior lien backed by the power to pursue foreclosure. That is an extraordinarily powerful investment instrument, especially when the person on the other side is already financially distressed.
Is This a Government-Facilitated Land Grab?
During our conversation, I put on what I called my tinfoil hat.
If private companies are buying millions of dollars in government-controlled liens, collecting substantial interest, and gaining the ability to initiate foreclosures, could the system be manipulated by politically connected investors or local insiders?
Jasson investigated the ownership of several tax-certificate companies. He did not find evidence connecting the companies he researched to government insiders.
Neither of us has evidence of a secret arrangement involving Chris Ronayne, county officials, NAR Solutions, or other investors.
That needs to be stated clearly.
Concern about the possibility of abuse is not proof that abuse has occurred.
But a system involving bulk financial transactions, distressed homeowners, complicated LLC structures, foreclosure rights, and limited public understanding deserves aggressive oversight and transparency.
The solution is not to invent corruption we cannot prove. The solution is to make the sales, contracts, buyers, interest rates, fees, foreclosures, and final property dispositions easy for the public to examine.
If the government is going to transfer its superior lien on someone’s home to a private company, every part of that transaction should be visible.
HB 493 Could Restrict These Sales
Ohio lawmakers are considering a bipartisan bill that would restrict this practice.
House Bill 493, introduced by Republican Rep. David Thomas and Democratic Rep. Daniel Troy, was originally written to end new delinquent property-tax certificate sales beginning January 1, 2027.
The bill has not passed the Ohio House or moved to the Senate, as we mistakenly said during the interview.
As of August 2026, it remains in the House Local Government Committee. A substitute version was accepted during committee hearings.
According to the Ohio Legislative Service Commission’s analysis, the substitute proposal is narrower than the original bill. It would generally prohibit new certificate sales involving owner-occupied residential and certain agricultural properties after 2026 unless the property owner consents. It would not necessarily eliminate every tax-certificate sale involving commercial or other types of property.
I support ending these private sales involving people’s homes.
If a homeowner owes taxes, the county should collect those taxes, offer realistic payment plans, provide notice, and use the legal remedies already available to the government.
We do not need to convert a family’s financial crisis into an investment opportunity carrying interest as high as 18 percent.
But Jasson raised a legitimate trade-off.
If counties can no longer sell thousands of delinquent accounts in bulk, they will still need to collect the taxes. They may need more employees, more legal resources, and more money to administer payment plans and foreclosures. Counties already facing large delinquent balances could experience serious budget pressure.
That is not a reason to preserve a predatory system.
It is a reason for lawmakers to replace it with something workable instead of merely prohibiting one collection method and pretending the unpaid taxes will disappear.
The Larger Property-Tax Problem
This entire debate exists because more Ohioans are struggling to afford their property taxes.
Home values have increased dramatically in many communities. That does not mean property taxes always rise by the same percentage. Ohio’s reduction factors, voted levies, exemptions, and overlapping taxing districts make the system more complicated than that.
For example, Axios calculated that a 32 percent valuation increase on one hypothetical Cuyahoga County home would have produced a 3.8 percent tax increase, not a 32 percent increase.
But even a smaller percentage increase can break a household budget when the cost of groceries, utilities, insurance, health care, and everything else is rising at the same time.
Jasson’s larger argument is that government budgets should not automatically expand simply because the paper value of people’s homes has increased.
He would like counties and local governments to use something closer to zero-based budgeting. Instead of beginning with last year’s spending and automatically building upward, governments would begin at zero, establish what services actually cost, and justify each new expense.
That comes with trade-offs too.
One Ohioan’s “waste” is another Ohioan’s school, fire department, addiction-treatment program, library, senior service, or child-protection worker. Cutting government spending sounds easy until somebody has to identify which services disappear.
There may not be one clean solution.
But attaching an ever-growing tax bill to an unrealized increase in a home’s value, then selling that debt to a private company when the homeowner cannot keep up, is not a morally defensible answer.
At the end of the day, most people are not falling behind on property taxes because they decided it would be fun to stop paying.
They are making choices.
Food or taxes.
Electricity or taxes.
Medication or taxes.
Keeping the car running so they can get to work or paying the entire tax bill on time.
Then the county sells that debt, the private company charges interest, the legal expenses begin, and the family’s home is placed under the threat of foreclosure.
The county gets its money.
The investor gets its return.
The homeowner gets crushed between them.
That is not right.