Foreclosure purchase update

I purchased a property at a foreclosure auction in December of 2010.  I wrote about the initial purchase here, and another entry about it where I talked about my being puzzled by the banks handling of the matter here. 

And when I got a call from the bank asking if they could buy it back, I wrote about that here. 

I never did hear back from the bank regarding repurchasing the house, but I did get a notice posted on the door about a month later -- they were starting foreclosure proceedings against it. 

So I called the attorney and had him take care of it, and that was about it until Friday. 

The auction scene.  Imagine 4 other groups like this.

This building is two townhouses that share a wall.  The other half of the townhouse got auctioned off on Friday, and I was the 2nd bidder on it.  I bid it to $102k, and then stopped; the winning (and only other bidder) got it for $104k.  Turns out that its a Canadian investment firm, buying houses down here. 

The courthouse steps foreclosure auction is a little hectic.  All of the trustees handle multiple accounts, and all of the auctions are simultaneous -- so I had a bit of a scramble to figure out which guy was handling my auction, allow him to verify that I had funds (certified checks or cash only, please) and wait until my property came up.   

I'd guess that more than half of the properties had zero bidders and reverted to the mortgage holder, but the other half had bidders.  At this auction there were 5 active bidders and I'm going to guess that they spent something on the order of $3 million at this particular auction.   I can't say what they were bidding on -- I didn't do the research on the various other properties being auctioned.  Some properties had multiple bidders, some only 1. 

These Canadians purchased this townhouse sight-unseen.  They had never been inside it.  Now I'd been inside because I was there when the bank crew secured it, but when I met them later in the day they were expecting much worse than they found.   "We've seen some bad ones.  All the appliances are here, walls and floors in good shape, no damage!" said one of the guys. 

So I pitched them on the idea of buying my unit so that they'd own both halves of the building.