by
Adam Ghassemi
GALLATIN,
Tenn.
– After seven years of notifications, penalties and waiting for homeowners to
pay their property taxes, Sumner County began their first tax lien auction.
With every
property there are taxes to be paid, but Thursday people got to bid on property
tied to a different time, before the word "recession" was part
everyday vocabulary.
"We
decided to wait with the economy the way it was," said Sumner County Clerk
and Master Darlene Daughtry. "We feel like it's time that the economy is
turning around."
Sumner County
is finally auctioning off parcels delinquent as far back as 2005.
It's why
contractor Floyd Wilkinson got in a bidding war over an old home in the county
and won.
"The
historical site is what got me to look at it," he said of a Rock Springs
Road home he won. "Of course I would have liked to have bought some of the
other property, but this is what I really came for."
There was no
way to fully know what kind of situation the bidders were buying.
"You
could end up with something really good or something that you can't do anything
with," said Daughtry.
Up-and-coming
real estate investor Chris Isaacson relies on his research.
"Are you
able to turn it around, get it back on the market, invest it and rent it out?
There's a ton of options with it," he said.
At age 26, he
fought off other bidders to write the largest check of the auction – $46,000
for a Hendersonville home on Lakeside Park – to cover $9,955.20 in back taxes.
"Hendersonville
holds strong property values. It's a great place to live and it's already got a
home on it. Some of the other lots didn't necessarily have developments on them
or anything like that, so you're buying more than just raw land," Isaacson
said.
"It's the way our system works. You don't pay your taxes then it gets sold
at the courthouse steps," he went on to say.
The highest
bidders don't get deeds right away. They have to wait at least a year to give
the owner, lender or anyone with a lien an opportunity to pay up. If that
happens, bidders get all their money back, plus 10%. If not, they get the
property for pennies on the dollar.
The county
started with 125 delinquent properties with back taxes from 2005 to 2007, but
many owners scrambled to pay things off. Thursday's auction shrunk down to only
32.
The next tax
lien auction won't likely happen until late 2013.
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