Tax Assessor Gary Beech reports on recent county tax sale

Pearl River County Tax Assessor Gary Beech recently reported to the Board of Supervisors on the results of this year’s tax sale. The tax sale allows a property to be purchased for non-payment of taxes by the registered owner.

Actual delinquent tax for 2017 was $2,090,955 and for 2016 was $2,048,092. This is without the overbid amounts. Overbid is the amount of money paid by the purchaser above what is owed on the parcel.

Beech told the Supervisors “we had an increase of $59,505.00 over last year with our total sale amounting to $235,810.00. Last year was around $176,000 and the year before was $144,000.”

While a lot of sales are going more and more to online sales, Beech feels Pearl River County benefits from not being online.

“If we would have went online and would seen the jump from $178K to $235K, we would probably said this online stuff is great and it made us $59K dollars. I believe with us not going online and being one of the last places that people actually show up, I think we get more overbids.”

Beech explained another factor that most likely contributed to the higher number for 2017.

“Over the years, you would usually see maybe 2 or 3 professional bidders here. Now, you could have as many as 20 of them and they are sent here with an amount of money to invest and they’ll stay until they spend it all.”

“The money is not the county’s on day one. Until a parcel matures, two years after the sale, the owner can come back and redeem the property,” Beech stated.

Beech pointed out that a lot of the parcels come into the tax sale when a family member will die and the children may not want to deal with the property and just let the taxes pile up and the parcel ends up in the sale.

“A lot of times, the individuals either have no desire and means to keep the property.”