It can be frightening to know that you can lose your home if you have not paid your property taxes for some time. There have been many instances of homeowners facing foreclosure process initiated by their local county to recover unpaid taxes. To understand better how forclosure process works in your state, visit U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Every county has the right to collect state and local taxes from homeowners. If you have not paid your taxes for 3 or more years, your local county can sell your property to collect these taxes from the sale proceeds.

If you have received a notice from the office of your county which says your home is either subject to or in the process of foreclosure, there is no need to panic. There are many ways in which you can prevent foreclosure of your home. In this article we’re going to talk about three the most common ones.

Before your county can start the proceedings to sell your home, it gives you a 30 day notice to deposit your unpaid taxes. You need to appear in court within these 30 days and tell the judge why the county should not go for foreclosure of your home.

However, you cannot escape from paying the property taxes. Here are three common ways to pay your unpaid property tax and avoid foreclosure of your home.

1) Ask Tax Collector to Make a Flexible Repayment Plan

If the tax collector understand your position and agrees to collect unpaid taxes in a part payment plan, you have the option to pay the amount in installments. If foreclosure proceedings have already been initiated, this option may not be available to you.

2) Over 65 Tax Deferral

If you are over the age of 65, you can ask for application of tax deferral. Once this tax deferral is applied, all proceedings for foreclosure automatically stand stopped.

3) Apply for Property Tax Loan

You can easily apply for a property tax loan to repay your unpaid taxes. You can obtain this loan from various local and national lenders. It is by far the easiest and most common way among property owners of dealing with the situation of facing a foreclosure.

Property tax lenders mostly offer quite flexible payment plans and usually don’t check credit history of the property owner. Therefore, majority of applicants get qualified to receive this type of loan.

However, in many cases interest rates for property tax loans are higher than conventional loans, which can make this solution not that appealing in the first glance. "Many people are not aware that despite the higher interest rates," said Kelley Hopkins, the president of Direct Tax Loan, "taking this loan will be cheaper for the property owner in the end of the day."

The reason is that the fees and penalties owed to the local authority at this point are either similar or higher than the interest charged by a property tax loan provider. This is why property tax loans have become so popular, especially in the state of Texas.

Delinquent property taxes increase to become a huge amount as penalties are added up on the amount you owe. By choosing to ignore your property taxes, you can only invite more trouble for you. Take action now as soon as possible to avoid the looming danger of foreclosure.