From the New Castle Courier-Times:
Nearing the end of about 20 minutes worth of instructions, auctioneer Glen Luedtke gave the reason for Thursday's morning's property tax sale in the Henry County courthouse.
"If a taxpayer is not going to keep taxes current, this is an opportunity to put the property in the hands of people who have shown they will keep it current," he said.
Shortly thereafter he launched into taking bids, attempting to get the taxes paid on 316 properties which, together, had accumulated $1,161,535.02 in past due property tax, penalties and fees. Properties can be sold for the amount owed to the county after the owner has missed several installments, with repeated notifications bringing no result.
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Henry County Auditor Patricia French said that while many buyers are local, some are professionals who go from county to county looking for property investments. Although she likes to see property ownership stay local, bidders from anywhere are welcome. The idea, she said, is to get the property back to producing income for the county.
She and County Treasurer Gene Bundy both said they were pleased with the sale.
"We sold about 20 percent of what we had on the list" of delinquent properties, Bundy said. He had hoped that perhaps 25 percent would be sold but noted that the list of delinquent properties has been shrinking because of better efforts to get past-due property tax paid.
"Money-wise, we did pretty good," he said.
About 50 buyers put in bids on 61 of the delinquent properties. The bidders agreed to pay $650,743.84 for the properties, or $500,389.42 more than had been owed on them. Some bids were only for the amount owed, but others - on more desirable properties - ran as high as several thousand dollars more than owed.
Prior to the sale, past due taxes and charges had been paid on another 105 properties, bringing in $199,685.65.
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For the 255 properties that did not sell, the county commissioners will acquire a tax lien and can offer those properties for sale later. A commissioners' sale was conducted online in the spring, French said, and another will be scheduled next spring.
http://www.thecouriertimes.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=283633&SectionID=23&SubSectionID=45&S=1
