Selling a House in Lis Pendens on Long Island

You ran your name through a public-records search, or your title insurance company called, or you saw the County Clerk filing index online and there it is: Notice of Pendency, with your name and the address of your house, filed by some bank’s foreclosure law firm. Scary phrase, scarier-looking PDF, and the words lis pendens on a Latin-flavored court document make people picture sheriffs at the door tomorrow morning.

That is not what’s happening. A lis pendens is one specific thing, with one specific legal effect, and once you understand what it is and what it isn’t, the next steps are much clearer. This guide explains how Notice of Pendency works in New York, what it means for your Long Island house specifically, and what your options actually are once one is recorded.

What is a lis pendens (Notice of Pendency)?

CPLR §6501 authorizes a Notice of Pendency in any action where the judgment “would affect the title to, or the possession, use or enjoyment of, real property.” In residential mortgage foreclosure, that includes pretty much every case. So the foreclosing lender’s law firm files two documents at the start:

1. A summons and complaint in Supreme Court (Nassau Supreme Court in Mineola, Suffolk Supreme Court in Riverhead), which begins the lawsuit.
2. A Notice of Pendency in the County Clerk’s office where the property sits, which gives public notice of the lawsuit.

The lis pendens is recorded against the property in the same indexing system that records deeds and mortgages. From that point forward, anyone running a title search on the house, a buyer’s title insurer, a refinance lender, a contractor checking for liens before doing major work, sees it.

What the lis pendens does:

• Provides constructive notice. Anyone acquiring an interest in the property after the filing takes it subject to the lawsuit’s outcome. They can’t claim “I didn’t know about the foreclosure.”
• Prevents the homeowner from quietly transferring clean title. Title companies won’t insure a sale, refinance, or HELOC over an active lis pendens.
• Locks in venue and timeline. The case proceeds in the court where it was filed.

What the lis pendens does not do:

• It does not transfer ownership of the house. You still own it.
• It does not bar you from living there. You can live in your house through the entire foreclosure case until the referee’s sale.
• It does not stop you from making mortgage payments, applying for a loan modification, attending settlement conferences, or contesting the foreclosure.
• It does not, by itself, hit your credit report.
• It does not block a sale, but it makes most retail sales fall through, which we’ll come back to.

What triggers a lis pendens on Long Island

In rough order of frequency on Long Island residential files:

• Mortgage foreclosure (by far the most common). Lender or servicer files when the loan has been in default long enough that workout efforts have failed. Usually 5 to 9 months past the first missed payment, after the RPAPL §1304 90-day notice has expired.
• HELOC or second-mortgage foreclosure. A junior lienholder can file independently of the first mortgage holder. Less common but it happens, particularly with HELOCs taken out at the top of the 2005 to 2007 cycle.
• Tax-lien foreclosure. Nassau and Suffolk both sell delinquent property-tax liens. The buyer of the lien (often a third-party servicer) can foreclose on the lien after the statutory redemption period expires.
• Mechanic’s lien foreclosure. A contractor who filed a mechanic’s lien for unpaid work can sue to foreclose the lien against the property.
• Partition action. Co-owners suing to force sale of jointly held property under RPAPL Article 9. Common in inherited-property disputes between siblings.
• Divorce action involving real property. Some matrimonial filings include a Notice of Pendency to prevent one spouse from selling or encumbering the marital home before equitable distribution is settled.
• Specific-performance action. A buyer suing a seller who backed out of a real estate contract may file a lis pendens to prevent the seller from selling to a third party.

This guide focuses on the foreclosure version, that’s the lis pendens hitting Long Island front doors most often. The mechanics for the other categories are similar, the underlying remedy is what differs.

What it means for selling your house

Here’s the part most homeowners get wrong, in both directions.

Wrong direction one: “There’s a lis pendens, so I can’t sell.” Not true. The house is yours, you can sell it. Title can pass.

Wrong direction two: “There’s a lis pendens but I can list it normally.” Also not true, in any practical sense. The moment a retail buyer’s attorney pulls a title report, the lis pendens shows up. The buyer’s lender (if conventional financing) will not close. The buyer’s title insurance carrier will not issue clean title insurance. Most retail buyers walk, and the ones that don’t try to renegotiate the price downward by enough to make the deal painful.

The path that actually works:

A buyer with cash, who can close in days to weeks rather than months, takes title subject to the pending foreclosure, and uses the closing wire to pay off the mortgage in full. The lender has no remaining claim. The lender’s law firm files a stipulation of discontinuance with the court, the lis pendens is cancelled under CPLR §6514, and the chain of title is clean. The new owner starts fresh.

That is, in fact, what we do every week on Long Island, and why cash buyers are the default solution for homeowners with active foreclosure cases pending.

How the math works (and why timing matters)

The clock that started when the lis pendens was filed is also the clock burning your equity.

Every day the case sits on the docket, the payoff goes up. Per-diem interest at the note rate. Late fees. Servicer-advanced property taxes (Nassau and Suffolk both run high, and a non-paying file lets escrow shortages compound fast). Force-placed insurance at 2 to 3x normal rates. Foreclosure attorney fees, which run $500 to $1,500 per docket event, then jump again at the motion-for-summary-judgment stage and again at judgment of foreclosure.

A typical Long Island file 18 months into foreclosure has $30,000 to $80,000 in fees and advances on top of the principal balance. Two more years on the docket can add $20,000 to $40,000 more. Every dollar of that comes out of your equity at sale, or out of the surplus at auction.

If you’re sitting at $650,000 of value, $350,000 of mortgage balance, and the lis pendens just got filed, you have $300,000 of equity exposed to the case. If you wait 18 months and the file ages out, that same equity might be $250,000. Wait until a referee’s sale, and the auction-bidder’s discount plus the cumulative fees can take it to $150,000 or less, depending on how the bidding goes.

The economics push toward selling early, on terms you control, while the equity is still yours.

Cancelling a lis pendens

Three ways the lis pendens comes off the property:

1. The case is dismissed and the homeowner moves under CPLR §6514 to cancel. Court signs an order, homeowner records it with the County Clerk, lis pendens is removed from the chain.
2. The mortgage is paid off (whether through a cash sale, refinance, modification with arrears cleared, or any other route), and the lender’s attorney files a stipulation of discontinuance and cancellation. Routine post-payoff cleanup.
3. The case proceeds to judgment of foreclosure and a referee’s sale, the new buyer at auction takes title, and the foreclosure action is fully resolved. The lis pendens served its purpose.

The Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act of 2022 (FAPA) materially changed the rules for cases where a lis pendens has expired. Before FAPA, lenders routinely re-filed a successive lis pendens to keep stale cases alive. FAPA’s amendments to RPAPL §1301 and CPLR §6516 sharply limited that, in many cases prohibiting it. If the lis pendens against your property is more than 3 years old, has not been extended, or is part of a case the lender attempted to dismiss and refile, there’s a real chance the case has FAPA exposure. That’s a question for a NY foreclosure-defense attorney.

What to do this week

Whatever stage you’re at, here are the actions that materially change your outcome:

• Read the summons and complaint. Find them in the envelope from the process server, or pull the docket on the New York State Courts Electronic Filing system (NYSCEF) by case number. Note the answer deadline.
• File an answer, even a short pro se one. Default judgments in NY foreclosure cases are routine when homeowners ignore the summons, and a default forecloses (no pun intended) every other defense and the right to a CPLR §3408 settlement conference. A timely answer keeps you in the game.
• Pull a current mortgage payoff letter (call the servicer, request the payoff in writing, valid for 30 days). The number is higher than your statement balance, because of fees and advances.
• Get a realistic value on the house. Not Zillow, not the agent who sold the house across the street five years ago. A current cash-buyer offer or a recent comparable LI sale on a similar street.
• Talk to a HUD-approved housing counselor. The list is in the §1304 notice you got 90 days before the case was filed, also at hud.gov/findacounselor. Free, fluent in NY workout options, no sales pitch.
• If you want to sell, talk to a cash buyer who closes on Long Island routinely. That’s us, and there are others. Compare offers, ask for the comp set, take the deal that makes the math work.

How NY Cash Sale handles lis pendens situations

We are a Long Island cash buyer, principal not agent. Lis pendens cases are common in our pipeline, and the closing mechanics are well-worn at this point.

The way it actually goes:

1. You submit your address (or call us). Within about 5 minutes, our team calls back.
2. The first conversation is roughly 10 minutes. We confirm what you got served with, when the lis pendens was filed, what the rough payoff looks like, who the servicer is, and what your timeline is.
3. If we’re a fit, we schedule a walkthrough. We can also buy sight unseen for foreclosure-window properties, common when the homeowner has already moved out or is uncomfortable showing the house.
4. Within 24 hours of the walkthrough we send a written cash offer with our comp set. You see the math.
5. If you accept, we sign a contract with a 10% non-refundable deposit. That deposit is real commitment, we are not the buyer who wholesales the contract and disappears.
6. Closing happens on whatever timeline you and your attorney pick. The wire pays the full payoff (principal, interest, fees, advances) to the servicer at closing. The lender’s attorney files the stipulation of discontinuance and cancellation of the lis pendens. The remaining proceeds go to you. The foreclosure case ends, the lis pendens is cancelled, the chain of title is clean.

We pay all closing costs on our side, you do not bring money to the table. If your situation has wrinkles (a junior HELOC also in default, co-borrower complications, an active Chapter 13 plan), the call is still worth ten minutes, the answer might be that the wrinkle is exactly the kind we’ve solved before, or that you’re better served by a different path. We will tell you which.