Attended my first foreclosure auction...

[Account Closed]

Today was my county foreclosure auction and tax lien sale... and I went for the first couple of hours, just to observe.

I thought I had done some solid research (I was wrong).  A couple weeks ago I got on the county site, and waded through the hundreds of pages of PDF documents that my county published.  I wrote down all the properties within the areas near me, and I drove around to look at them.  I was shocked to see that most of the houses I made note of were still occupied, even though the auction was only a few days away (scary to me).  

I showed up today with the 3 properties I'd be interested in watching, along with some basic info I thought I needed... address and my "max" number.  I was hoping just to know if my numbers were in the ballpark of these investors who know what they're doing.

I was really overwhelmed when I got there, because it turned out the tax lien auction was also set to kick off - which I didn't yet realize was different than the foreclosure auction (dumb newbie)... I was also confused when I saw all the "Auction.com" banners and tables everywhere.  Even more confusion when 10am came, and there were about 5 different auctions happening simultaneously.  I had no idea which auction would be auctioning off the 3 properties I was hoping to watch... I never did figure that out.  

I quickly realized that having the address was a waste of time - because everything was auctioned by "Lot and Block" which I hadn't written down (newbie mistake).  So, I jumped on the county site to find the lot and block of my 3 properties, but never did know which auction(s) would have them :(

Long story short, I think I learned a few things, but I'm left with SO MANY more questions...

• What's the deal with Auction.com?  I tried to look at the site for my county, and they only had a hand-ful of properties listed, even though there were a couple hundred being auctioned off.
• I saw lots of "lists" with Auction.com branding, but scoured their site and couldn't find them... Do they hand out lists at the auction and I missed them?
• Whats the deal with the tax lien auction? (I'm already researching, but info here would be awesome)
• How do I know which properties will be at which auction tables?  I think I figured out that each auction is the Trustee... but when I go back and look at the documents the county posted, there are like 500 different trustees.  They must be grouping them together somehow - I just don't know how...
• Funding... It really blows my mind that many of these properties were going for 200-400k and people were just running to get a money order (it's due within the hour of the auction closing).  Are these investors just sitting with that kind of capital waiting for the auctions?  Is it likely personal/private money?  I assume you can't get Hard Money for these?

I'm sure I'll keep coming up with more questions as my mind settles down from the experience... wow.  I am going to try to do more research and be better prepared next month...  Any insight to this process would be amazing!