Quote Quoting budwad
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A local search at the municipal level would have shown when and who paid the taxes.
And how do you propose that the identity of the person or entity that paid the taxes would indicate that there's a potential cloud on the title? People routinely escrow their taxes and have them paid by their mortgage lender or servicer.
Quote Quoting budwad
The foreclosure and tax delinquency are two separate issues but BOA has to clear up the taxes to be able to sell the property after foreclosure. Can we agree on that?
The issue under debate is not whether the bank made a mistake and should fix things, as would appear to be the case. It's the fantasy that this would fall under title insurance. That said, if the bank wants to sell property REO with an outstanding tax liability, it is free to do so.
Quote Quoting budwad
If the title company did their research 4 months before the closing and didn't check just prior then they might not have known. But that is their problem. They issued a clear title at closing.
Because the title was clear at closing.

Even if I bought into the view that the title company had to investigate who paid the property taxes, and then follow up with them to find out if they were reimbursed if it were anybody but the title owner, it would be ludicrous to suggest that they had to do so over and over and over right up to the moment of closing "just in case" something new happened. Had a tax debt been discovered and had the bank agreed to pay it off prior to closing, it would be reasonable to expect that the payoff would be verified; but we're speaking of a situation in which there was neither a tax debt that could have been discovered nor a lien resulting from its payoff.