Montague County auction

I drove to the Montague County Courthouse yesterday morning to observe the Sheriff sale that was scheduled for 10 am. I left work in plenty of time because I was not sure where the auction was to take place. The notice said it would be done on the steps on the east side of the courthouse so when I got there, I headed the direction. When I got inside – because there was no one outside – I found a group of about twelve people waiting. It would have been easy to tell that they were there for the auction just from what Mama and I are used to seeing when we go to Lawton, but most of the people there also had the posted notice in their hands. I was twenty minutes early. I stood and waited while the group swelled to about twenty. Most of us standing in the hallway. There were two benches, but they were both filled when I got there. When the Sheriff and the attending lawyer came in everyone perked up; especially as the lawyer read off the properties on the notice that had been redeemed and would not be for sale. With about five minutes to go, a gentleman about my age walked in and asked the lawyer if she had extra copies of the notice. He had left his at the office. I stepped across the hallway and offered to share mine with him. He was delighted and introduced himself. He is a realtor in the Bowie area and was interested in one of the properties that had been taken off the list. But he stayed through the auction.

Mama and I were interested in one particular house. There was not much owed on the property, so I was curious to see how high it might be bid up. To my surprise, when that property came up, no one placed a bid. That and the fact that the opening bid was almost one thousand dollars less than the listed opening bid got me excited. The property now moves to another list from which Mama and I can purchase it. I asked the lawyer to make sure and she told me that since no one was interested at the auction, it had officially been “struck off”. I was free to walk into the assessor’s office (which we were standing in front of) and make an offer - which did not have to meet the minimum bid amount. That got me even more excited. After I talked briefly with the realtor I had just met, I went out to the truck to call Mama.

I shared with Mama what had happened and what I had found out and she got even more excited than I did. When she gets back tomorrow, I will have her do the background work required for us to buy with confidence and we will probably move toward that purchase. Since I had the time and I was already near Bowie, I decided to drive by the house again and get more pictures. It was at that point that I made a very interesting discovery. The house that Mama and I originally thought was the property being offered for sale was not the actual property. We had been looking at 802 when the address for sale was 803. That is how people doing this business get into trouble. Armed with that information, I began to study the right property – and liked it even better than the one we had mistakenly identified. That is not normally the case, however, Mama and I are ready to do our homework and our leg work to make the purchase if all the numbers add up and all the obstacles prove manageable. It would be our first rental property. That’s exciting! Mama and I would be required to hold the property for two years before we could sell it – should we choose to do so. But we are free to rent the property during that holding period. For right now, that seems doable.

Back to the realtor I met. He was interested in a five-acre property that was listed for less than two thousand dollars. It had been redeemed and was no longer being offered for sale. He told me he had planned on buying the land, holding it for six months and the selling it at market value for acreage – about $1,500 per acre. A nice profit for the trouble of holding it for six months.

One very young couple at the auction bought a house in Nocona for $6,100. They were so excited they were about to bust. Even if I had wanted the property, I would not have bid against them. I did not get the chance to ask what their interest was, whether for a home for themselves, an investment property, a redemption for someone they knew, but I know they would have happily let me know had I gotten the chance to ask. Only one person bid against them but dropped out quickly once they saw who was bidding. That was a fun dynamic to watch.

Mama comes home tomorrow. Happy day for me.