[Runs: Monday: 3.2; Wednesday: 3.2; Saturday 4.6 at Bonita Lakes]
We had a nice visit with #1 Son yesterday in Meridian. We actually went down there on Friday evening, stayed overnight, then ran all three of us in the Mississippi State Games trail run event. This is a jeep-road around the Lake Bonita (?) there in town. We each won bronze medals.
While there, Son and I checked out a piece of real estate. It is a tax role property not very far from where he lives.
Mississippi has this system where the counties collect property taxes. If some owner gets in arrears they have tax sales. But if some property is not picked up in the tax sale the next level is with the Secretary of State office. From there they take applications for anyone to buy. There are three “Tiers” based on timing. In tier 1 they will sell for 1/2 of the retail value, tier 2 is some smaller percentage (10% ? I’ll find a link to the regulations), and tier 3 is for anything they can get. And the tiers are based on the number of years it has been in the S-of-S list.
I had looked at this place online and sent in a bid on it. I was thinking it was in tier 2, so my bid was enough to cover the taxes and a bit more. That had been awhile ago. Recently I called, and they told me I should be receiving acceptance notification at a tier 1 price, half of the county’s valuation of the place.
I don’t know if I actually will receive notification. But, while we were down in the area I decided I’d like to get a better look at the property. All I’ve had so far was google overhead and street view.
It is a 3.5 acre plot with a house. From what I could tell, the owner had some problems getting his property tax paid and had been hit/miss for awhile. I found an obituary for him online from fall of 2022, age 81.
The plot is long and thin, in a quiet area. We pulled into a grassy driveway. I noticed the water service shut-off box there. There were two cars, both with license plates last updated in 2014. Both sedans, one a Chevy Lumina. The landscape is very overgrown and there is a bit of lawn, then trees and stuff which keep the house hidden from the road.
We pushed our way back to the house. It is an older house in the southern style with a deep front porch. The house sits to the left along the lot line. As we got close we could see the porch roof was damaged, and a place on the house also. I went up the front steps. The porch floor was not in good shape, it had been patched with a sheet of OSB in front of the door. To the right there were remains of a cheap blue tarp covering the porch floor remains. To the left the porch was in better shape. The were some beautiful big windows in the older style. The front door was slightly ajar but the screen door was locked. I could seen in (front door must have been mostly glass), and I could see furniture and lots of stuff in the house. It reminded me a bit of the horder TV show, probably because there were grocery bags piled up near the door. The windows were very dirty.
We went through the stickers and vines around the side of the house. It is built on a crawlspace, which was exposed. I had a flashlight and I could see that there were a lot of brick piers and generally the underside looked pretty good. We saw the electric service point on the side of the house which had one of the new digital style electric meters. The service was low amperage and had breakers not fuses. (The electric company told me last week that the service was shut off in January 2023.) There was a place on a gable end that looked like a tree branch may have damaged the roof. But generally the house roof was in better shape than the porch roof.
Around the back there was some erosion of the siding in one spot. And the steps up to the back door were just remains, and mossy remains, of risers and stairs. No one had been going that way for a long time.
My hope in putting in the bid was to obtain something rustic but livable, do a bit of fix up, and then make that available to #1 Son rent free.
Unfortunately, this place is a bit beyond rustic.
I came away generally sad. Here some guy in his 70’s and 80’s, in the house he lived his whole life, had the place coming down around him in his later years. I can see why he didn’t pay his property taxes, the guy probably didn’t have the money to do it.
At my original bid it may be interesting. But at half of the listed value probably not.
It would be a beautiful place fixed up. Modern houses in the south are cramped and dark. At least the cheaper ones are. This was one of the older ones with high ceilings, big windows and wide porch.
I currently have a derelict MG Midget and the hulk of an old helicopter in my driveway. There a character issue in there somewhere.