Harford MD, bid 300% of Assess Value for liens. Insane?

[Bingji Wang]

Today I attended Maryland Harford county tax lien sale auction online.

As show in the screenshot above. Why people bid at 300% price of the assessed value for liens?

According to the county's rule, the 300% of assess value is the max price can bid.  So no one can outbid them.

Are they crazy?  What if owner won't redeem. Will they pay 300% for that property?

I don't understand their strategy.

Could you give me some hint?

(Another link for the picture above.)

[Ned Carey]

@Bingji Wang the bidders are bidding for the interest. They are assuming that the owner will redeem. If the owner does not redeem, they will simply walk away from their bid. They simply figure in a number of walk aways, into their financial calculations. 

Notice that the assessments of the properties with the 300% bids are in the many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nobody is going to risk losing that nice a property for a few thousand in taxes. Now if those people understood how the game worked they could stick it to the tax lien holder.