When you hear the term "foreclosure" is safety o assume that you realize your house is in jeopardy, and you will do whatever you can to fight the foreclosure process. If you realize this won't work, you pack up and move out because the bank is soon coming to take it away from you. However, once this process is over, most ex-homeowners would assume that they are done with their old house, seeing as the bank took it away from them. Sadly, this is not the case for many homeowners today who are being hit hard with what is called a "zombie" foreclosure.

A "zombie" foreclosure is something that is more recently appearing throughout the housing market more recently, especially after the housing market plummeted back in 2008. Essentially what this means is that despite the best knowledge of the ex-homeowner, that their house was taken over by the bank, they are finding out years down the road that the home is still under their name and that they owe a lot of money on property taxes they never played for in years past. The reason for this is because do to the extremely high influx of foreclosed homes in the market, the bank during that season was unable to keep up with the number of homes, and therefore never were able to actually take possession or remove the original owners name from the property. MoneyWatch, reports that this is actually the case for an estimated third of the foreclosed homes that are out on the market right now.

In a normal home foreclosure, the owners will receive notice from the bank stating that they will repossess the home and the title of the home if payments are not made. Once the bank received possession of the home, they will auction it off and the highest bidder will take it over. However, with so many foreclosures that happened in 2008, there were far too many homes needing to go through the housing unloading process by the bank, so many were never touched. As a result, today, even years down the road, home owners are receiving notices that they owe substantial amounts of money because of the bank's failure to follow through with their responsibilities. Because of that, the former owners are still considered to be legally responsible.

According to reports by RealtyTrac, between the months of January and March of this year there were over 300,000 reported homes that would fall under the "zombie" category because the bank still had not taken actual possession of the property even though the owner moved out long ago. There are two different types of foreclosure laws in the country depending on what stat you live in. If you live in a state where there is a judicial foreclosure, the process is known to take significantly longer (up to five years, maybe longer) as opposed to a non-judicial state which would usually take up to three years.

Sadly, if you are one of these ex-homeowners who have been hit hard with a property tax statement on a home you believed you no longer owned, you are not alone. There are hundreds of thousands of individual who are in the same boat as you because they were fooled into thinking that the bank took care of business. Sadly, if these taxes go unpaid, it can result in the home owner to go into debt because of the extensive amount of money they owe and perhaps were not prepared for. If you have any concerns regarding foreclosures, contact a trusted real estate attorney in your area today for more information!