I’ve lived in the same house in Greenfield for 48 years. I’ve been able to pay my property tax and water/sewer tax bills on time. But on May 28, 2025, I received a pink “Demand for Payment” for the fourth quarter of my fiscal year 2025 property tax bill. The Notice of Demand warned me: “If you don’t pay the taxes, your property could be taken away.” I had 14 days to pay up.
Every year on Jan. 1, a special tax lien is automatically put on all properties in Massachusetts. If you don’t pay your taxes or water/sewer bill, this lien can be secured through a process called “tax taking.” This lien allows a municipality to foreclose on your property if you continue not to pay. The municipality can then file an “Instrument of Taking” with the Registry of Deeds. The city’s “tax title” becomes a form of limited ownership that allows them to take immediate possession of your home. “If a city gets tax title, it’s harder to sell or refinance your property unless you pay off the tax lien,” the Demand notice explains.
For all houses entered into tax title on or after Nov. 1, 2024, the treasurer must wait 12 months after “taking” to ask the Land Court to foreclose all rights of redemption. But another law in 2025 says for houses entered into tax title before Nov. 1, 2024, the treasurer can ask for redemption rights to be foreclosed after six months. Homeowners can ask the court to set the terms for how they can redeem their property. If you don’t redeem your property, the court can transfer ownership to the municipality.
If your property is foreclosed, the city can conduct a tax sale (public auction), but you can still get back any extra money (home equity) that is left after paying all the taxes, interest, charges and legal fees you owe — even though you no longer own the property.
After a tax taking or a tax sale, you still have a “right of redemption.” But once the court issues a “judgement of foreclosure,” the municipality has 30 days to decide to either sell or retain the property. Some cities will give or sell a tax receivable for unpaid property taxes to a third party, which will then collect the unpaid taxes.
You can redeem your property even if the city has sold the tax title at a tax sale. Just pay what you owe, and your property is “redeemed.” Under Mass. General Laws Chapter 60, section 62 and 62A, as amended in 2024, the municipality can adopt an ordinance that authorizes the treasurer to enter into “payment agreements” with anyone entitled to redeem ownership of parcels in tax title, with a down payment of 10%, instead of the former 25%. Repayment agreements can now be extended from a 5-year limit up to 10 years. The Greenfield treasurer and our tax title attorney (who makes her living billing delinquent taxpayers for her time on tax takings) recommended limiting repayment terms to five years, which raises the monthly cost to the taxpayer. I recommend seven years, which lowers monthly rates but adds to interest paid.
To relieve interest payments, state law lets municipalities “waive the interest that has been accrued” (up to 100%). The motion drafted for Greenfield’s City Council sets the new statutory interest rate at 8% — down from 16%. But the 16% interest rate will continue to accrue for any house in tax title before Nov. 1, 2024. For this reason, Greenfield should exercise its right under the 2024 state law to “waive the interest that has accrued… subject to such lower limit as the ordinance may specify… uniformly for classes of tax titles.” For example, Greenfield’s payment agreements ordinance could “waive 50% of accrued interest for any ‘low income’ residential use by a household defined as having an annual income below 80% the Area Median Income for the city” (currently <$44,491).
In a March 2, 2026 memo to the City Council, Mayor Virginia Desorgher wrote: “Waiving of interest penalties for payment plans was deemed unhelpful to the city and unfair to all other late payees who are obligated to pay them and are not doing a payment plan.” “The goal is for everyone to stay in their homes,” the mayor added, “and the taxes need to be paid.”
Yes, let’s collect taxes — but let’s waive half of accrued interest for taxpayers who have paid usurious interest rates. Let’s minimize foreclosures and auctions, and house people — not unhouse them.
Al Norman’s Pushback column is published in the Recorder every first and third Wednesday of the month.