“Lis pendens” (its abbreviated form is “lis pend”) is a Latin term that means “suit pending”. This can mean any awaiting lawsuit or a particular circumstance with a public notice for litigation that has been filed in the same place where the title of property has been filed as well. In actual practice, a lis pendens is typically a pending litigation on your house. This note protects a petitioner’s claim on the real estate such that the encumbrance, mortgage, and sale of the real property will not decrease his rights to it should he triumph in its case. In certain areas and jurisdictions, whenever the notice is appropriately filed, lis pendens is seen as a positive and constructive alert to the pending lawsuit for other litigants as well as subordinate or unrecorded lien holders.

Handling, Finding, or Removing Lis Pendens

The most appropriate way to respond to a lis pendens is to hire a lawyer who’ll handle this pending lawsuit for you, particularly one that’s a specialist when it comes to real estate law. It’ll also be wise for you to check with the listing agent in order to confirm if the lis pendens may affect your chances of purchasing the home and whether or not it has been filed by the creditor himself. There are a couple of other ways to handle this pending lawsuit. You can either tackle the fundamental issue, stating that there’s no cloud on title and that the lis pendens is invalid for that very reason.
To find out if your property has lis pendens, you’ll either have to wait for the notice of default or notice of lis pendens (what it’s called depends on the state you’re on) or you could check county records to see if a lis pendens has already been recorded against your property. With that said, there are many methods to dismiss this particular lawsuit, with the abovementioned method just one of several ways that includes Failure to State a Cause of Action. There are even some states where you can post a bond that’s equivalent to the claimed amount by the complaint; it’s an effective but expensive way to release your property from this pending lawsuit.

The Pros and Cons of Lis Pendens

A lis pendens shouldn’t be considered a separate court action. In terms of the type of lis pendens that’s considered as pending litigation for your home, these are usually filed on the recorder’s office or land records in the town or country from where your real estate is located. It also depends on the state; there are those that have records in each town, while there are others that depend on the county seat for records. Moreover, a lis pendens is a lien that’s put on your real estate if the title or some other matter concerning the property is the subject of the suit—e.g., foreclosure, declaration of title, suit for partition, mechanics liens, and so on.
Even though the lis pendens is a complete nightmare to homeowners everywhere, home buyers will definitely benefit from the rock-bottom prices of a property that’s suffering from this pending lawsuit. The buyer can name his price for the property, because the lis pendens practically alerts him that it’s a property in foreclosure. Then again, there are certain risks to buying this type of home, which includes homes in a state of disrepair and surprise expenses.