Comment by jcrawfordor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jcrawfordor | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

There are large swaths of land in the US which are under ownership but unusable because the owners are absentee and the cost and complexity of locating the owner or pursuing a lein are both greater than the value of the property. In my part of the country there are places where this situation has persisted for fifty years, as the auction value of the property is only in the hundreds of dollars per acre and back property tax in the same range ($16 per year)... and these are properties under modern plats. Dairy farms expand acre by acre, sometimes hiring private investigators in an effort to locate owners of adjacent lots to make a buyout offer. This isn't really all that unusual in the rural west, it's a legacy of the post-WWII suburban real estate boom.

Even in higher property value areas I would be surprised to see a tax delinquency action taken after just a few years. The administrative cost is substantial.

> In my part of the country there are places where this situation has persisted for fifty years, as the auction value of the property is only in the hundreds of dollars per acre

At 2021 market valuations, not lower public assessments?

> Even in higher property value areas I would be surprised to see a tax delinquency action taken after just a few years. The administrative cost is substantial

In some areas owner only has a few years then legal department will process tax sale within few months. It's true that in many areas property tax less than 1% of true market value. Prior to 1930s when no state or local government was collecting sales tax it used to be closer 3%.

Right, actual sale prices range $300-$800 per acre for many failed Southwestern (NM, CO, AZ, southeastern CA, probably UT and Eastern OR but I'm less knowledgeable in that area) suburban developments. Often they are picked up by sketchy flippers who sell them to poorly informed buyers at "highly inflated" rates of say $3000 seller financed (e.g. $99 down, $50 per month on terms sometimes as long as 30 years). Searching "land investment" will turn up a bunch of these. While described as "near town" they are often over an hour out with poor access and no utilities. Ironically the tax assessed value on these is usually more in line with actual valuation as they have seen zero or negative price change over time.

Perhaps this is different in other parts of the country, I've just never heard of a tax sale running that quickly. Typically in the city here it takes a decade or more, especially if the ownership situation is at all complex.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com