Tarrytown half acre owes $670K tax, but who owns it?

A property in Austin’s affluent Tarrytown neighborhood is at the center of an ownership battle.

Two homeowners who live on either side of an undeveloped quarter-acre property that overlooks the Colorado River both argue that the land belongs to them, the Austin American-Statesman reported. Travis County officials found that no one has a clear title to the property, despite the neighbors — who are both lawyers, by the way — claiming otherwise.

Travis County Attorney Delia Garza’s office is seeking to foreclose for unpaid property taxes on the land. If that goes through, Travis County officials will auction the property to the highest bidder.

The waterfront property has been appraised at $3.2 million and likely won’t sell for cheap even after a foreclosure.

The residential lot on Scenic Drive has an accumulated tax bill of more than $670,000 since 2013. However, without an address or owner listed for the land, the tax bill was prepared but never sent out.

County officials aren’t sure how nine years have passed without anyone noticing this. Their best guess is that the lot was created out of excess land during the construction of a roadway or neighboring properties. The county uses satellite imagery to determine lot sizes and likely created the lot because, as county attorney Javier Gutierrez said “you can’t leave a gap in the map.”

The Travis Central Appraisal District has 16 properties without a clear owner listed with tax bills totaling $929,000.

If the Tarrytown property sells at auction, the bid winner will be on the hook for the outstanding tax bill.

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