The annual delinquent tax sale was completed without problems Monday morning. About 40 bidders crowded the board room at the courthouse to “purchase” a total of $59,250 in delinquent taxes on 124 parcels in the county.
The sale was much smaller than had been anticipated two weeks earlier. When the legal notice of delinquent taxes was published there were more than 300 parcels listed, with 162 of them owned by Hunter Farms and Hunter of Iowa. County treasurer Donna Lawson worried about an overflow crowd and a sale that would last four or five hours.
The Hunter taxes, totaling nearly $100,000, were paid last week.
Unpaid taxes ranged from a little as $11 to more than $1,800. Included was the former Pizza Ranch in Jefferson in the amount of $1,396. When the first three bidders from the computer-generated random selection passed on the purchase, 11 bidders put their number in for the next random selection. Adair Asset Management LLC/ BMO Harris of Adel was selected and paid the taxes.
The tax sale lasted just more than an hour.
The tax sale minimizes the impact of unpaid taxes on the county. Bidders pay the unpaid taxes and most often get their money back, plus 2 percent per month, when the property owners “redeem” their property by paying the back taxes, interest and penalties. The process by which a bidder would become owner of the property takes nearly three years and is only occasionally completed without the property owner redeeming the property.
Many of the bidders were paid by outside holding companies to attend the sale.
