STL City Property Auction

[Kyle Eckert]

I went to the previous property auction from the city and I was astounded at the amount of people there.  I know there is a large amount of due diligence needed for these properties due to possible liens.  It looked like there was a few investors buying 10s of properties at a time, and one lady bought 6 properties on the same street, very purposefully.  I would really like to understand this process better.

If anyone is interested in meeting up and discussing the process, or needs an extra pair of hands to help with some aspect of their process, I would be very intersted in hearing about it.

[Kyle Eckert]

The list for the auction came out yesterday, having 382 properties listed for auction.  67/382 are repeats from previous auctions.  These could probably be purchased for the minimum bid but were possibly passed on for good reason.

-I plotted the properties using an online map maker, giving a visual of where the properties are.  It should be noted that using St. Louis instead of Saint Louis gave a much better map.  I will post the map after the auction occurs.

-95% of the properties are in North St. Louis, which is not surprising to me.  There are probably some gems in there in stable parts of town, but I am not familiar enough with the area to make that assessment so I rule them out.

-Last month only had 2 properties which I found remotely interesting.  One was in my neighborhood.  Disappointingly, I believe it was settled before the auction and was skipped over.  This reassured my assessment of that property though, since me and 3 guys in high priced suits left immediately after.

-I google mapped each property and used street view to find the house and check that it wasn't falling down, some were.  Of the roughly 30 properties in my part of town, I narrowed down 14 to pursue further.  Again, 1 in my neighborhood.

-I called a few title search companies and found the process to be expensive for someone else to do. The city of STL currently doesn't have a database for lien research, that I could find at least. http://www.stlouiscityrecorder.org/land/stlarealie... was useful for listing the types of liens that could exist.

-I will attempt to send a letter to the owners of the properties of interest to offer assistance in getting their property out from auction.  We will see how that does, doesn't cost much to do.

-Again, if anyone else wants to share their experience with this process feel free.