How a New Orleans House With a Missing Heir, Tax Sale and Code Liens Finally Sold

Some houses are difficult to sell because they need repairs. Others are difficult because the problems go far beyond the physical condition of the property.

This New Orleans property had a combination of issues that made a normal sale extremely difficult: three heirs, one who could no longer be located, succession work that still needed to be completed, years of delinquent property taxes, a previous tax sale, significant city code liens and a house that had continued to deteriorate.

Home Buyer Louisiana had actually first spoken with the owners years earlier. By the time we became involved again in 2026, the situation looked very different.

Working alongside Olivia Byers and the team at Title Stream, we were able to find a legal and financial path forward.

The property has now closed, the outstanding issues can be resolved, and instead of continuing to deteriorate, the house is moving into its next chapter: a major renovation.

The Owners Originally Contacted Us in 2021

The property was owned by three sisters. They first spoke with Home Buyer Louisiana in 2021 because they were considering selling the house as-is. They had also spoken with other cash buyers.

At the time, they weren’t comfortable with the offers they were receiving and decided they would rather renovate the property themselves.

And that was perfectly reasonable.

We didn’t buy the house. They chose another path, and we supported their decision.

Unfortunately, the renovation didn’t happen as planned.

Over the following years, the situation surrounding the property became considerably more complicated.

By 2026, the Property Had Become a Much Bigger Problem

When we reconnected with the property, several years had passed. The property taxes had fallen behind. Code violations had accumulated. The house had deteriorated substantially.

The relationship between the three sisters had also broken down, and one of the heirs could no longer be located.

At that point, this wasn’t simply a matter of agreeing on a purchase price.

Before anybody could realistically take ownership and renovate the house, the legal ownership, tax-sale issues, outstanding taxes and code liens all had to be addressed.

That is the part of distressed real estate that people often don’t see. Sometimes finding someone willing to buy the house is actually the easy part.

Can You Sell Inherited Property in Louisiana if One Heir Is Missing?

Potentially, yes, but the process depends heavily on the circumstances. In this particular case, one of the three heirs could not be located. That meant the other two couldn’t simply sign a normal sale and ignore the third person’s ownership interest.

We worked with Title Stream, whose team handled the legal and title process necessary to move the transaction forward.

Olivia Byers of Title Stream explained at the closing that the property had essentially the full range of difficult title issues:

• A missing heir
• A succession that needed to be completed
• Past-due property taxes
• A previous tax sale
• Significant code liens

The process required petitioning the court and advertising the proposed sale in the newspaper.

Importantly, the missing heir’s financial interest wasn’t simply eliminated. Her portion of the sale proceeds was arranged to be placed into the registry of the court, so that if she later surfaces, she remains entitled to her share.

That distinction matters. The goal wasn’t to take someone’s ownership interest away. It was to create a legal mechanism that allowed a property that had been stuck for years to finally move forward while protecting the missing heir’s rights.

The Property Had Also Been Sold at a Tax Sale

The missing heir wasn’t the only problem. The property had years-old delinquent taxes and had previously been sold at a tax sale.

That created another party whose interest had to be resolved before the property could move forward with clear title.

Title Stream worked through the tax-sale payoff and negotiated with the out-of-state tax-sale purchaser so that the necessary ownership interests could be transferred and the transaction could close.

This is another reason homeowners with old tax problems sometimes discover that selling a property isn’t as simple as finding a buyer.

Once a tax sale has occurred, the title history and rights of the various parties need to be examined carefully.

Then the Code Liens Threatened to Kill the Deal

While the court and title work were being completed, the property still had another major problem: accumulated New Orleans code liens.

According to Olivia, the code liens had reached a level that far exceeded the value of the property. That creates a practical problem.

If the cost of resolving old liens becomes greater than what anybody can reasonably invest in buying and repairing the property, the economics stop working. And when the economics don’t work, the property can simply remain stuck.

The team at Title Stream worked with the city to negotiate the code liens to a manageable amount. That created a path where existing obligations could be addressed while still leaving enough room for a new owner to take on the substantial cost and risk of renovating the house.

The result was exactly what everyone had been trying to achieve: getting the property back into commerce.

What Does “Getting a Property Back Into Commerce” Mean?

You hear this phrase regularly in complicated Louisiana real estate transactions. In practical terms, it means taking a property that has become trapped by ownership problems, unpaid taxes, liens, legal issues or physical deterioration and putting it back into productive use.

Instead of:

• continuing to accumulate unpaid taxes,
• continuing to receive code violations,
• deteriorating further,
• remaining boarded and vacant, and
• creating problems for neighboring homeowners,

the property can be transferred to someone capable of resolving those issues, renovating it and returning it to use. That’s what is happening here.

The Neighbors Had Been Waiting for Something to Happen

There was also another side to this transaction that didn’t appear on any title report. The neighborhood.

Dillon King initially visited the property as part of his role inspecting properties for Home Buyer Louisiana. The house was boarded up and needed extensive work.

While Dillon was trying to gain access for his inspection, two neighbors approached him. They wanted to know why he was there. More importantly, they were hoping he was there because somebody was finally going to do something with the property.

Dillon learned that neighbors had been communicating with city officials for years about problems surrounding the vacant house.

For the people living immediately around it, this wasn’t an abstract real estate transaction. It was a distressed property sitting in the middle of a neighborhood where families were trying to live and raise their children.

That conversation stuck with Dillon.

Home Buyer Louisiana Put the Deal Together – Dillon Is Taking On the Renovation

There’s an unusual final chapter to this transaction. Home Buyer Louisiana put the purchase together and worked through the transaction with the sellers and Title Stream. But Home Buyer Louisiana isn’t going to renovate the property.

Dillon works with Home Buyer Louisiana as our property inspector, but he is also a licensed general contractor and real estate investor. After seeing the property, understanding the neighborhood and speaking with the neighbors, Dillon decided he wanted to take the project on himself.

His own investment operation purchased the property and is assuming the renovation risk from here. And it’s a substantial project.

In Dillon’s words, the property needs “pretty much everything brand new.” There is significant cleanup to complete before construction can even properly begin, along with overgrowth and years of deferred maintenance.

But that also means we get to follow this story beyond the closing table.

Dillon King outside the Genois Street property in Mid-City New Orleans before renovation. The house had years of deferred maintenance, delinquent taxes, code liens and complicated title issues before it was finally able to close.

Why Deals Like This Matter

It’s easy to look at a blighted property and wonder why somebody doesn’t simply buy it and fix it. This transaction is a good example of why the answer can be complicated.

Before Dillon could take on the renovation, there had to be a solution for: three inherited ownership interests, a missing heir, succession work, court approval, newspaper advertising, delinquent property taxes, an old tax sale, an out-of-state tax-sale purchaser and substantial city code liens.

Any one of those problems can make a transaction difficult. This property had almost all of them. And no single person solved it. The sellers had to cooperate. Home Buyer Louisiana had to keep the transaction moving. Title Stream had to navigate the title and legal issues. The court process had to be completed. The tax-sale interest had to be resolved. The code liens had to become workable. And somebody still had to be willing to buy the property and take on the renovation risk at the end.

That’s why relationships with experienced title professionals matter so much in the type of real estate we buy.

We don’t pretend to personally know the answer to every complicated title problem. What experience has given us is a network of people who know how to work through them.

Closing day after Home Buyer Louisiana and Title Stream worked through a missing heir, succession, prior tax sale, delinquent taxes and code liens to get this New Orleans property back into commerce.

What Happens Next?

Closing isn’t the end of this story. It’s really the beginning of the next part.

Dillon now gets to start cleaning out and renovating the property. We’ll be documenting the progress as the boarded-up house moves from a long-running neighborhood problem toward being a usable property again.

That means this case study will continue to be updated with:

• cleanup and demolition,
• renovation progress,
• major discoveries during construction,
• before-and-after photos, and
• the finished property.

For the neighbors who approached Dillon during his first inspection, hopefully the most important update will simply be seeing a house they had worried about for years being taken care of again.

Do You Own a Louisiana Property With Complicated Title or Property Issues?

Not every difficult property looks like this one. Sometimes the problem is a missing heir. Sometimes there are multiple successions. Sometimes it’s delinquent property taxes, a prior tax sale, code violations, liens, tenants or simply a house that needs far more work than the owners want to take on.

These are exactly the kinds of situations Home Buyer Louisiana regularly evaluates.

You don’t need to know how to solve every legal or title issue before contacting us. That’s part of what we investigate.

If you have a house in New Orleans or elsewhere in South Louisiana markets we serve and aren’t sure whether it can even be sold, contact Home Buyer Louisiana and tell us what’s going on.

We’ll take a look at the situation and explain what options may be available.