Jefferson County Circuit Court Commissioner Sale in Louisville KY

Today, I went to the Jefferson County Circuit Court Master Commissioner’s sale on Liberty Street in Louisville. I had not been in a while and there was a foreclosure house in Glenmary that was on the auction block. We all need motivation to attend theses things, and, I needed a new blog topic

As always, it was a fast paced auction with each house selling in seconds. Once they read the description and ask for an opening bid, it is over very quickly.This is nothing like the old farm auctions where there strive to squeeze every drop from the buyers. You need to be ready to bid and bid quickly.

Today’s Louisville commissioner’s sale had 139 properties for sale. Of these, 59 were withdrawn before the sale. It seems to be a growing trend to pull the property at the last minute as the percentage withdrawn is higher than 2 years ago. I attribute this to the short sale process actually working along a few loan modifications (very few). This left 80 properties to go under the hammer in prices ranging from $12,000 to over a million dollars. Now the interesting part, only 3 of these actually sold to someone besides the bank pressing the action. For the remaining 77, there will be more legal fees, maintenance fees, real estate commissions, etc. They will all have been "cleansed" by the foreclosure process.

Most all of the bidding started at 2/3 of the Commissioner’s appraisal done just before the sale. Only 2 properties sold lower than 2/3 as that triggers the right of redemption for the homeowner. If a property sells for less than 2/3 of the appraisal, the homeowner has a year to buy the property back at the sale price plus 10% interest. And, he keeps whatever improvements have been made in this time frame.

I thought it was perplexing that several times the bid price approached or exceeded appraised price, but the foreclosing bank kept increasing their bid until they owned it. As I mentioned before, only 3 bidders were successful today. The property in Glenmary Estates that I had interest was appraised by the master commissioner at $290,000. I was the runner up bidder but quit letting the bank have the final bid of $274,000. This was 94% of appraisal. For me, this was a lot of money to invest in a house that I had never been through.

I mentioned that the sale goes quickly. From start to finish, the entire sale was over in 60 minutes. This included announcements and the time getting the 3 buyers to the table to make their purchase of the foreclosed property.

If you would like more information about the foreclosure process in Louisville KY, contact the The Dobbs Team in Louisville KY. You can also search for Louisville foreclosures or bank owned homes along with Louisville short sale homes on our website.