Sheriff’s Sale – Purchasing Property

We’ve been following local homes that come up for Sheriff’s sale for the past year or so and now have our eyes on 2 different ones to potentially bid on. Has anyone here went through this process before?

What We Know:
-must have certified funds on-hand to bid
-check for any liens against the property
-sale is “as-is”
-there may be an upset price that if not met, will cancel the sale

What We Don’t Know:
-Would we find out who is awarded the property on the same day of the posted Sheriff’s Sale?
-Do the previous owners have any right to the property they leave behind (furniture, bikes, etc)?
-Would we be permitted to look at the home (inside) on the day of the sale?

I’ve got some questions in to our family attorney and the local officials who handle this type of sale, but am curious to hear any experiences from people who have done this.

I bought a building once on a sheriffs sale. If I recall correctly the sale took place at the courthouse and anybody could attend. The property’s had a minimum bid they started at. It was a auction once they had the opening bid. Everything was as is where is. Any past due taxes were forgiven. If there was no bid you had a certain time you could go to the courthouse (I think it was a week) and buy it for the minimum bid. Thats how I bought mine. You will not be the only person interested, know what you are willing to spend and stop when you hit the number.

I used to buy a lot of sheriff’s certs for a company I worked for. I’ll try to answer but note I haven’t done an auction in 6 years.

-Would we find out who is awarded the property on the same day of the posted Sheriff’s Sale?
What do you mean awarded? You will know who wins the bid because you’ll be at a window with all the other people bidding, but their is a 6-12 month redemption period and shenanigxans can happen during that time. A lot of investors will find a way to throw a subordinate lien on the prop and buy you out. Owner or other lien holders could also redeem and you just earn the interest.
-Do the previous owners have any right to the property they leave behind (furniture, bikes, etc)? I don’t think they do. I remember storing 1 persons property for a time but that might have been part of an agreement to get them out of the house. Otherwise we usually brought dumpsters soon after redemption.
-Would we be permitted to look at the home (inside) on the day of the sale? Nope. The people still own the house until the end of redemption. You only hold the sheriffs cert. You could attempt to go to their house and ask to look inside but it may not go over well.

This is all assuming MN. The process varies greatly state to state.

The little I know here in Wisconsin it will state in the auction about past due taxes. The sale is usually held on the court house steps, and some sales will have a date for inspection.

This is all assuming MN. The process varies greatly state to state.

Not only state to state, but even by municipality. A few I attempted to buy: In some cases, the “first go around”, the opening bid is the amount of ALL the claimed costs – Bank note, back taxes, known liens, legal cost, and so on. It is common for the opening bid to be way too much and no one bids. Then it goes back to public notice and at auction again with a significantly lower opening. Meanwhile, if its a forclosure, people will start hitting up the bank with short sale offers and it may never come up to auction again. It varies and I’ve seen a lot of weird crap happen.

Read the public notice very closely. Finances, taking possesion of property and other details are usually made very clear

So if no one bids, technically the bank or mortgage holder then “wins”. They wouldn’t pay anything, but the redemption process would begin and if no one redeems they would take title. And these shouldn’t be confused with tax forfeit auctions as those are a different animal. I agree you may see some variation in the bid process between municipalities, but the overall fee and structural rules of the foreclosure/sheriffs sale/redemption are dictated by state statute.

FinickyFish wrote:

So if no one bids, technically the bank or mortgage holder then “wins”. They wouldn’t pay anything, but the redemption process would begin and if no one redeems they would take title. And these shouldn’t be confused with tax forfeit auctions as those are a different animal. I agree you may see some variation in the bid process between municipalities, but the overall fee and structural rules of the foreclosure/sheriffs sale/redemption are dictated by state statute.

I don’t know MN law, said there can easily be a number of differences from WI or CO where I follow sales. But technically on a mortgage default, the bank already won. It’s a matter of how much they recover to cover the principal balance and expenses

I don’t know MN law, said there can easily be a number of differences from WI or CO where I follow sales. But technically on a mortgage default, the bank already won. It’s a matter of how much they recover to cover the principal balance and expenses
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Gotcha. I thought you were talking specific to MN municipalities like county to county. Just didn’t want Bucky to think he’d see drastically different scenarios here. I wouldn’t even begin to know how WI or CO process works. We attempted tax auctions in IA once and that was so different we didn’t gain much traction.