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Tuesday, Nov. 03, 2009

Macon homes auctioned off because of late garbage bills

Last month, officials auctioned off six Macon homes because of long-overdue trash bills. For Benjamin Mitchell, the auction couldn’t have happened soon enough.

For just $4,568.89, Mitchell and a friend bought a years-vacant and overgrown duplex on New Street. It’s just around the corner from Mitchell’s newer home, which is assessed at 45 times the price he paid for the ramshackle house with a series of absentee landlords.

“My whole intention was to get this property cleaned up,” Mitchell said. “The side street’s finally starting to turn around.”

Mitchell and his friend were the only local buyers in last month’s trash bill auction. The other five properties were scooped up by a Florida company, Associated Partners LLC, that itself runs out of a home bought at a tax auction. Associated Properties and local homes’ owners could not be reached for comment.

Bibb County Tax Commissioner Tommy Tedders said about 280 properties initially were slated for auction last month because of the trash bills. Tedders said most of the delinquent bills stretch back to January 2007 when his department began collecting Macon garbage bills.

The overdue trash bills amount to $15 a month, plus interest and fees that typically amounted to about $700, he said.

Another 380 houses could potentially be auctioned off in December because of the tax bills, said Cheryl Lee, a deputy tax commissioner. But despite months of warnings and notifications, some homeowners wait until, almost literally, the last minute. She said four or five overdue trash bills were paid in the final few hours before last month’s auction.

That auction drew a flurry of people trying to pay off the bills, Tedders said.

The house Mitchell and friend James West bought had been through a series of ownership changes. A couple lost the home to foreclosure with Bank of America, which sold the property to a Utah investment company, county records show. Lee said someone from that company called about the bill a week before the auction, but the money was never sent.

Mitchell and West are now the owners — sort of. They’re actually lien-holders until they foreclose on the previous owners or take full possession of the property a year after the auction.

Residents who seemingly lost their homes aren’t immediately evicted and can buy the house back for the amount of the back taxes and a 20-percent premium on the auction bid, Tedders said.

In the case of a house that sold for $10,000, Tedders said the auction bidder could turn a $2,000 profit in less than a year.

Another 10 homes put out for auction did not receive bids last month.

The priciest auction was for a Vineville Avenue home, which sold for $35,000. The lowest auction price was for a Lyons Street home, when $681.75 claimed a property assessed at $44,210.

Mitchell said he just wants a better neighborhood, not a big profit. The New Street home has a door swinging open in the wind and a kitchen ceiling that’s caving in. He thinks the location could be a great spot for a nurse at The Medical Center of Central Georgia, which is just a few blocks away. Mitchell said Bibb County is well within its rights to file liens and auction off houses that aren’t paying what they owe.

“If you’re a diligent property owner, it’s one of those things you don’t have to worry about,” he said. “If you’re an absentee property owner, it’s a way to clear out the deadwood.”

To contact writer Mike Stucka, call 744-4251.