I received a letter 5 years ago from the county court about not being able to own property...more?

I had a vehicle which was repossessed in 2002. I believe I still owe the finance company around $5000, but I don't feel I owe it and I've explained so to them in a letter. Nevertheless, they took it to court, I didn't appear, they entered a plea of guilty. They have never taken steps to garnish me and I rarely hear from them either by letter or phone. BUT, the letter mentioned that I would not be able to own real property until the debt is settled. What does that mean exactly? I've found a piece of property that I would like to buy on contract so I wouldn't actually own it yet, right? Is it safe to go ahead and put money down on it or will they just rip it out from under me?

By the way, when I bought the car, I paid $25,000 for it and the book value was $29,000. From the time I bought it til the time it was repossessed, I put about 10K miles on it, new tires and kept the oil changed. Nothing about the car mechanically nor cosmetically was changed/degraded/harmed.

EIGHT months later (I know, my financial status went down quickly due to personal issues, by anyway), I still owed $17,000 on it total (I had a nice down payment when I purchased it) and the book value was $24,000. The car was in perfect condition with very low miles and they claim they sold it for $10,000. Now I know that is a lie because it was a Ford bought from a Ford dealership and was financed through Ford. They would not have run it through an auction block, they would have put it on a lot and made a damn profit. They claim I still owe them $7000, but I'm not about to pay it when they could have gotten twice what they claim they did. Anyway, what do I do? I'm NOT paying it.

You may have painted yourself into a corner with no way out.
The "interest" on that 5,000 thousand will, start piling up, and
make it worse.
You may have paid $25,000 for it, but the minute, you drove it
off the lot, you lost almost $5,000 right there.
Get some credit counseling, and get this straightened out.
Then get on with your life, without having to look over your back. <}:-})

it means that if you buy any property, on contract or not, they will attach a lien to it so that you won't have free and clear ownership of it and if you try to sell, they will get their money before you get yours...even if it is the equity.

You have money owed in your name! You owe or you don't get the right to do anything

The car likely lost 5000 dollars in value in the time you had it. They probably slapped on court costs and processing fees, too. It's not like repossessing a car is free for the lending company and they shouldn't have to pay those costs. If you'd been to court, they might have told you this. I don't imagine there are very many lending companies that will lend you the money with a repossession and outstanding debt on your credit history.

Pay what you owe.

Same thing happened to me with FORD red carpet leasing...BEWARE!!! Anyway, if the contract on the property is RECORDED...they may try to force a sale of the property to get what they want from you. I ended up filing BK because I was never able to work things out with Ford. You may want to see if you can settle for a lesser amount.