2015 Yavapai County Arizona Tax Lien Auction Results

[Jerry K.]

The 2015 annual Tax Lien auction for Yavapai county Arizona ended this week. I have the raw results data. There may be some slight changes since the official counts come out after all certificates are paid.

Number of liens sold to investors:

2015 - 2,039 (1,808 bought by investors - because 231 struck to county as no bidders)

2014 - 2,575

2013 - 2,382

Total dollar of liens sold:

2015 - $2,678,533.35 ($2,336,551.03 bought by investors - $341,982.32 not sold)

2014 - $3,015,871.87

2013 - $3,435,014.32

Average rate of return overall:

2015 - 6.75% (5.40% by investors when subtracting out struck to county liens which all get 16%)

2014 - 5.86%

2013 - 6.55%

Number of Investors who won liens:

2015 - 89

2014 - 116

2013 - 201

Total Number of bids for all liens:

2015 - 10,525

2014 - 18,812

2013 - 99,073,789

You bid down the interest rate in 1% increments from 16% down to 0%. Percentage with the most number of bids overall:

2015 - 6% 2,391 bids

2014 - 7% 3,542 bids

2013 - 4% 36,251,623 bids

Most bids per lien/parcel:

2015 - 7 liens had 24 bids

2014 - One lien had 41 bids

2013 - One lien had 470,295 bids

Created an interesting Pivot table where I grouped the liens by "Property Use Description". The county had no Use Description on 21 parcels that did sell in the auction. This table is based only on the liens that were purchased by investors. I eliminated the Struck to County liens that all received 16%:

The Vacant land again had decent interest rates, had a large number of liens available, and had the least amount of competition (bids). Residential liens (Primary Residence and Residential Other) had the second most number of liens but had the lowest rates and the highest competition (bids).

I'll post more on my BP blog (link below in the signature line) in the coming weeks. 

[Ned Carey]

@Jerry K.  A coupe of years ago an out of town company had 5 accounts in the Baltimore City auction. All 5 accounts bid the same amount.

The problem is that here, the winner is based on who puts there bid in first, not someone selected at random. So the company that they entered  first won all their bids and the other four companies won nothing. It was funny to see someone clueless to the bidding rules.

It is another example of how big money is not necessarily smart money. I see this at work a LOT in tax sales.