Eleven of 14 leftover certificates sit on land nobody wants

$9,400 total, my first attempt at this. The county had a list of certificates left over from earlier sales that you can buy directly at the stated rate, no auction, no bidding against anyone. I read that as a bargain. Nobody competing meant nobody bidding my rate down.

I didn't look at the parcels on a map until after I paid. Three were normal small residential lots and all three redeemed inside a year, which is the whole reason I'm not more sour about this. The other eleven were drainage strips, a sliver behind a strip mall about eight feet wide, and pieces of land with no road frontage at all. Assessed values between $300 and $1,100.

Nothing redeemed on those eleven in 26 months, and nothing was going to, because the owners had done the same math I should have done and decided the tax bill was worth more than the dirt. Foreclosing would have cost me more in legal and filing than the parcels were worth, and the process varies by state anyway so I'd have had to pay someone just to learn what it involved. I let them go. Out about $6,800 including the fees.

What I'd do differently: open the parcel map before I open my wallet. And treat a certificate that nobody bought at auction as a certificate nobody wanted, until I can say specifically why they were wrong.

2 replies

-1devon_pierce Get yoursPRO5

I've got a column on my list now called "why is this still available" and if I can't answer it in a sentence the line gets dropped. Your eight foot sliver is going in my notes as the example. The three residential lots redeeming is the useful signal in your post, the mechanism works fine, you just bought the wrong dirt.

-1ehernandez74PO2BPRO5

Did the three that redeemed cover any of it? Rough math says three lots out of $9,400 might have been $2,000 of your basis, so even a full statutory year of interest on those doesn't dent the $6,800. Asking because I want to know whether a good pick inside a bad batch can rescue anything, or whether the bad batch just sets the number.