Mellissa Gardina wants to move out of her Vandergrift neighborhood.
She was looking for a deal and over the summer found her potential new home in nearby Oklahoma Borough, not through a real estate listing but in a booklet of Westmoreland County’s tax delinquent properties that the county publishes each year. Those properties became available in an auction Monday at the courthouse in Greensburg.
Tax Bureau Solicitor Tim Andrews said preliminary estimates are that about 200 properties were sold for a total of just more than $2.5 million. If those figures hold, it will reflect record sales at the county’s tax auction.
Gardina, 55, was among the nearly 200 bidders for the properties made available to cover delinquent taxes from the previous two years. Gardina had a $14,000 budget to buy her target, a two-story home on Thorn Street.
She drove by the house and did online research before concluding it was the most move-in ready auction property in her price range in an area she would consider for a new residence.
“We’re trying to move out of Vandergrift and buy a new home. It’s an area that’s become unsafe, and the kids are just tearing things up. There’s no sense of respect, so we’re trying to move into the suburbs,” Gardina said.
Property owners who made last-minute tax payments or who obtained court orders to delay sales whittled the list of parcels on the auction block to about 450.
The property Gardina wanted carried a minimum bid of just less than $6,300 to cover taxes and costs. Multiple bidders drove up the sale price and put the property just out of Gardina’s reach. It eventually sold for $18,000.
“A developer won out,” Gardina said. “We are going to keep looking. If we are going to spend that kind of money, we’ll spend it on the place where we want to be.”
County Tax Bureau Director Sarah Minnick said final sale tallies will be available Tuesday. Officials last year reported 165 tax delinquent properties brought in more than $2.5 million.
Andrews said the county will recoup owed taxes and costs of the sale from the winning bids. Additional amounts above the tax bills and costs will be diverted to cover outstanding liens or in some cases, be paid to the former property owners, he said.
The tax sale has grown in recent years, with real estate developers looking to add to their inventories as well as hobbyists looking to flip homes for a profit.
Kaitlyn Peterson, 21, of Scottdale made her first foray into real estate Monday as she bid on several properties, purchasing at least one house and lot in the borough that she said she hopes to renovate and flip to pay for law school tuition. Peterson, a criminal justice student who expects to graduate in December from Robert Morris University, beat out other potential buyers with her $14,500 bid for a house and lot on Mt. Pleasant Road in her hometown.
She also was a successful bidder for two mobile homes in Ruffs Dale and looks to continue purchasing and flipping properties as a hobby, following in her parents’ footsteps. They also acquire and renovate properties.
“I was nervous at first, but I got my feet into the water a little bit. I’ve been open to this my whole life, and I plan to go to Fayette County (to bid on properties) in two weeks,” Peterson said.
