Matthew Cox

When a homeowner stops making mortgage payments –

Or stops paying property taxes.

What happens is the lender or the city that they were paying property taxes actually sues to foreclose on the property.

It's a court action.

And if the lender or the city who should have been receiving the property taxes wins that judgment in court, the court orders the property to be sold at a sheriff's sale to recover the unpaid balance.

Yes.

Right.

And so what happens is the highest bidder, which is often the bank itself, will get the title to the property.

And...

And so any balance exceeding the amount due in either the mortgage or due to the city of Philadelphia in the story we're about to tell goes to the homeowner or their heirs.

Right.

So they're forcing the – let's say I owe $10,000 in property taxes, and I say I'm not paying my property taxes anymore.

My county is going to come in, foreclose my property.

They're going to sell it, and then they're going to get their $10,000.

But the rest of the money from that sale is going to go to me because I was the homeowner.

Make sense?

The homeowner, yeah.

All right, so let's get back to McAngelo Tillman.

He identified properties in Philadelphia that had substantial unpaid property tax bills.

And in some cases, they were owned by people who were dead.