Quick look at Palm Beach County FL results with sub account elimination in 2013

[Jerry K.]

I've talked about Palm Beach County being one of the first counties to eliminate the use of multiple sub accounts in their auctions, I speculated that it would be great to level the playing field in terms of individuals having a chance to win more certificates, but that I suspected overall winning rates might not go up.

I spent a little time this morning crunching some numbers from the 2013 Palm Beach county lien sale and compared it to 2012 when they still allowed sub accounts.

2012 Average interest rate over all certificates that were purchased was 1.30%
2013 Average interest rate over all certificates that were purchased was 1.01%

The average rate actually went down when sub accounts were eliminated.

There were a total of 22,698 liens sold in 2012.
There were a total of 21,058 liens sold in 2013.