Escrow officer and lender missed lien and closed the deal

[Ranjit Sandhu]

Hello lawyers in Northern California! Closed deal (SFR) couple months back and I was representing a buyer. Everyone missed PACE lien which had a link on pre-lim report. Escrow officer missed it as well lender missed it too. Seller did not disclose that he took loan when he built something in the property. When buyer received property tax bill last month he noticed it was big amount under Mello roos. When contacted escrow/title company even after closing escrow officer kept saying it was for solar, even though new owner assumed lease for solar, so it was not for solar. Buyer contacted high up title company and they declined and stated because new owner signed the pre-lim nothing they can do. The last resort is to sue seller because seller failed to disclose on SPQ/TDS. But before suing seller new owner filked a title claim let's see how it goes. Any advise?

[Tom Gimer]

Thanks for the tag, @Russell Brazil. The existence of a PACE-related special assessment should have been obvious from the tax bill. That would seem to fall under the category of buyer due diligence.

But regardless of that... since with PACE the financed package of energy improvements should be designed to at least pay for itself over the term of the assessment, what are the buyer's damages?

Taxes and assessments for future years are never covered under a title policy... of course now that I said "never" @Peter Walther will probably correct me on that!