How to Remove a Lien From a Property

A lien on your property is a claim that clouds your title and blocks you from selling or refinancing with a normal lender until it’s cleared. There are really only a few ways to get one off: pay it, refinance to pay it, dispute it, or wait for it to expire. Which one fits depends on the lien type, whether you actually owe the debt, and how much time and equity you have.

This guide walks through each route, with a focus on the one most homeowners end up using: an equity refinance that pays the lien out and discharges it. The legal details below use Ontario law as the example; rules differ in other provinces. For the financing service, see our judgment & lien mortgage page. This is general information, not legal advice; confirm your situation with a lawyer.

You can’t clear what you can’t see. A lawyer or title-search company can pull your parcel register and search the sheriff’s writ index to show exactly what’s registered: the type of claim, the claimant, the amount and the priority. Common types behave differently:

• Construction (contractor’s) lien: from an unpaid contractor, subcontractor or supplier. In Ontario it must generally be preserved within 60 days and perfected within a further 90 days, or it expires¹.
• Judgment / writ: a creditor’s enforcement after winning a lawsuit (what a writ is). A filed writ binds land you own in the sheriff’s area².
• Tax lien: unpaid municipal property taxes are a special lien that ranks ahead of mortgages and other claims except the Crown³; the CRA can also place a lien on a home for an unpaid tax debt⁴.
• Support / family arrears: enforceable against property.

Knowing the type tells you which removal routes are even available and how urgent it is.

The cleanest route, when the debt is valid, is to pay the claimant and obtain a discharge (for a construction lien, a discharge of the claim for lien; for a writ, the creditor’s direction to the sheriff to withdraw it), which your lawyer then registers or files to remove the claim from title. The CRA, for example, says it usually removes its lien once the debt is paid⁴. Get the discharge in writing and registered: paying without registering the discharge leaves the lien clouding your title on paper.

Most homeowners don’t have a lump sum sitting idle, which is where the next route comes in.

If you have equity but not cash, an equity refinance is how you fund the payout. An alternative lender (B-lender/alt-A or private) advances a mortgage sized to cover your existing balance plus the lien plus costs. At funding the money goes to your lawyer in trust, who pays the claimant, gets the discharge and registers it, so the lien comes off and you’re left with clean title and one mortgage.

This works even when a bank has already declined you, because it’s equity-based, not credit-based. A federally regulated bank can’t refinance above 80% of value⁵; alternative lenders generally keep the new mortgage under about 80% loan-to-value at alt-A or 65–75% on private (illustrative; it varies by lender and property). Multiple liens can be bundled into a single payout. This is the route our judgment & lien mortgage service arranges.

If you don’t actually owe the debt (a construction lien for defective or incomplete work, or a claim in the wrong amount), you may be able to dispute it rather than pay it. For a construction lien in Ontario, the court will vacate the lien from title if you pay into court, or post security for, the full amount claimed plus security for costs (25% of the claim, capped at $250,000)¹. The dispute then continues against the money in court, which lets you refinance or sell in the meantime without conceding the claim.

Disputes are legal work and belong with a lawyer. But the important point for a homeowner is that a lien you genuinely dispute doesn’t have to freeze your property: there’s a mechanism to get it off title while you fight it.

Some liens expire if the claimant doesn’t take the next legal step in time. In Ontario, a preserved construction lien expires unless it’s perfected (usually by starting a court action) within 90 days after the last day it could have been preserved¹. A writ of seizure and sale expires six years after issue, but the creditor can renew it before then for another six years⁶. So in narrow cases a lien lapses on its own.

But waiting is a dangerous default strategy: an active writ or a perfected construction lien can move toward a forced sale long before it would ever expire, and interest keeps accruing. Treat expiry as a lawyer’s technical assessment of a specific lien, not a plan you rely on.

If you owe the debt and have cash, pay and discharge. If you owe it but don’t have cash, refinance against your equity to pay it out: the most common route, and the one that also clears the path back to a bank. If you genuinely don’t owe it, dispute or vacate with a lawyer. Only rarely does waiting make sense.

Mortgage Squad Advisors (FSRA #13737) arranges the equity refinance that clears a lien, discloses every fee up front, and maps the exit back to bank pricing. See the judgment & lien mortgage page, or get a confidential assessment, with no credit pull to begin. For legal steps to dispute a lien, work with a licensed lawyer.