Both the seller and buyers came away satisfied from the auction of county-owned properties Saturday.
Crowds of bidders and spectators spilled out from underneath the tent in front of the Schoharie County Court House as Treasurer Bill Cherry and helpers sold 34 properties that had been taken for delinquent taxes.
Mr. Cherry and other auction organizers predicted the properties would raise $450,500. With the unpaid taxes totaling $260,903, the county would net a little less than $190,000.
Instead, the county made out much better. The properties sold for $568,000, so the county netted $307,096.
“The auction was a great success,” Mr. Cherry said. “Given the state of the economy and the real estate market, it exceeded our expectations.”
Two properties tied for the highest hammer price: Two cabins on 57 acres in Conesville and a two-family home in the Village of Middleburgh. Each went for $87,000.
Two adjoining parcels sold as one straddled the Summit-Jefferson line. Totaling 57 acres, they brought $65,000.
An 11-acre parcel with a pond in Richmondville went for a bid of $32,000.
Mr. Cherry and his staff, along with a team from the Real Property Tax Service, estimate what each property would bring. They targeted the Richmondville piece for $10,000.
“It seems like large tracts of land were what people were looking for, not so much a house on a lot,” Mr. Cherry said.
Those buyers were apparently satisfied even though bids blew by the county’s expectations.
In other cases, however, bidders came away with genuine bargains, getting properties far under county estimates.
Mr. Cherry and his appraisers predicted two single-family homes in Sharon would go for $40,000 each. Instead, one went for $19,000; the other, for $17,800.
“Some people got a heck of a bargain,” Mr. Cherry said. “I think if people who didn’t come to the auction see that, they’ll come next year.”
One final bargain was the former Lakeview House in Summit. It sold for $26,000, though Mr. Cherry was hoping for $50,000.
He said Schoharie County is one of the very few––maybe the only––county in the state to hold its own auction of tax-delinquent properties. Most others hire an auction service, paying the auctioneer 10 percent of the proceeds.
“Our office and Real Property do a terrific job putting this together,” Mr. Cherry said. “And Central Data Processing has the catalog [of properties] online.
“It’s a real team effort and a winning combination. I think we do it well for a small county.”