Industry News

“UNCLAIMED” IS NOT THE SAME AS “UNDELIVERABLE”
Posted Date: 12/6/2005

Pursuant to Real Property Tax Law (RPTL) Section 1125(1)(a) the enforcing officer shall set forth on or before the date of first publication a notice to be mailed to each owner by certified mail and any other person by ordinary first class mail.

 

          In a June 2005 Court of Appeals decision (Harner v. County of Tioga, 5 N.Y.3d 136, 800 N.Y.S.2d 112), the Court stated that “unclaimed” mail is not the same as “undeliverable” when a certified mailing of the required notice pursuant to the RPTL Section 1125 was returned as “unclaimed”, but the first class mailings were never returned to the County.  The Court notes that if the notice of tax delinquency had been previously returned as “undeliverable”, then the County might have been put on notice to make further inquiries concerning the Owner’s address.  However, as the Court observed, for years the ordinary mailings by first class mail were received by the Owner, as evidenced by the Owner’s payments of taxes. 

 

          Accordingly, the Court sited the 2003 Kennedy decision, which stressed the differences between “unclaimed” and “undeliverable” and noted that “unclaimed” does not imply and invalid address, especially when none of the first class mailings were returned.  Therefore, the Court held that the record owner bore the responsibility of updating his address to protect his ownership interest and thus affirmed the final foreclosure that gave the county the property.

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