Someone apparently thought that about a Texas option contract but the Texas Supreme Court disagreed and said the contract was still valid, endorsing the fiction.

Hmm, if I refuse to pay my car note, they repossess it. If you fail to pay taxes, the gov't places a lien on the property. Can the family that never received payment put a lien in place instead? That would prevent the $10million sale. That'd get someone's attention

The thing is it's just a promise. If it would actually torch the deal to not hand over the $10, you can do it at any time. But the court agreed that it was just a fiction. Presumably if you didn't pay the option price, which may not have been specified directly in the contract, or was in some other exhibit, the deal never happened. But this technicality of consideration is not the same thing.

Generally only if there was some effort to collect it.

Would that mean the original owner gets it back? Would they have to pay property tax backlog retroactively? Might be huge..

I'd put any tax bill owed back to the city. They are the ones that cheated on the deal. Of course, I live in fantasy land with that kind of notion