Oakland County Tax Foreclosure Auction – Part II

Due to a scheduling conflict, it was held at Ultimate Soccer Arenas – which turned out to be a much better venue for a public auction than the county auditorium where August’s first round was held. That auction left a lot to be desired as the standing-room only crowd of bidders was not allowed to bring any electronic device with a camera into the auction, due to government security policies for the adjacent courts in the building. Besides having way more room, the new venue offered modern comforts like a pretty decent onsite café and easy to access bathrooms which just made this a much better experience for bidders.

So, how many of our readers bought something at the auction?

We saw several bidders pick up a great deal on an investment property. We saw other properties go for retail values and could only hope it was a homeowner buying and not an investor at those prices.

We really appreciated, probably more than most attendees, how the County Treasurer, Andy Meisner, warned bidders repeatedly at the beginning of each of the two days not to buy a property unless they’d done their due diligence. Unfortunately, we still saw more than a few properties go for high enough amounts to lead us to question what due diligence the bidder had actually done.

We spoke to a couple to bidders that seemed to have money burning a hole in their pocket. They were justifying their bidding strategy/limit on their projected future value of properties. Not a bad strategy if you’re an experienced speculator, but not something a novice investor should be doing. Of course, at the current rock-bottom real estate prices, most people are buying with cash – which leaves you a lot of room for mistakes that can be made up for over enough time.