Good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
It's time now for round two of our community connection today and we have our
friends in from Washington County. We have Melissa and Jennifer in with WOS today.
And first of all, Melissa, tell us a little bit about your
office and what goes on there. Not the intricate decal, but you know
the public side of it. You know what I'm saying. All right,
Well, Washington County Treasure's Office, and what we do is we mail out
the tax statements and then in return, we collect them. So that's that's
our that's our biggest job that we do. You do transactions is what you
do? A lot of them? Do a lot of those, yes,
come December, all right. And Jennifer even tell us what you do.
I help manage the the mailing out and the preparing of the information. Oh
logistics, Oh my gosh, that's rough on the noggin. I'd be lost,
and that stuff to keep her first deputy. So she she does a
lot of managing the office and takes care of make sure everything gets done on
the timely manner. Oh my gosh, we got a big resale coming on.
And tell us a little about at the resale. Okay, So our
resale we have that every year. It's it's by statutes. Every county across
the state holds a June resale and it's always the second Monday in June at
nine o'clock. Um. This year, we have about sixty properties going to
our Salem. These properties that we're taking this year all have two thousand and
nineteen delinquent taxes all on them. So, um, there's a lot of
processing going on there isn't there. There's a lot of processing. You'll see
around town. We'll have these big two foot by three foot signs that notify
the surrounding owners that the property is going to be for sale. Those are
going up this week. The Sheriff's office is posting those for us. So
how does this really take place? I mean, if you're delinquent on your
taxes, and you know, if you're not paying any taxes, well you
know you're in trouble. And this is the penalty for not paying your taxes.
You lose your property, correct right, and so the property can be
bought for the amount of the delinquent taxes. It is it's it's the amount
of the delinquent taxes or two thirds of the assessed value. Whatever is lower
lower lower, actually lower in this usually you know, I can't think yeah,
yeah, And what about folks, how did it get to this point?
I mean, are they notified? Imagine they get letter from me once
in a while. Oh yeah, they've been notified three times every year,
and then they've been notified at additional three times so far this year that the
sale is coming out. So so plenty of time has been put forth in
order to get right with g BE a local government. We're more than happy
to work with them, and they contact us. The last thing you want
to do is this right? Oh absolutely, this is the last thing we
want to do the house or their property. And yeah, we don't want
to end up owning it either. So oh yeah, that's a whole new
ball of action. It is, it is, that's a lot of So
what do the bidders need to know about this? With their big retail coming
up? They can anytime. They can either come to our office if they
if they think they're going to want to come and bid, we ask them
to come and get preregistered. They can also do it online. Um,
we have a form there where they can log on and get get signed up.
We'll give everybody a bitter number. Um, this is just like an
auction. We hold it in the parking lot of our building there on Johnstone.
Yeah, and we just we start with the first one on the list
and we just start auction auctioning them off. Now do people have to be
pre qualified to be a bidder? You don't have to be pre qualified because
you have to have cash. Oh okay, well there you go. You
can't show up to say about put it on the plastic. No, yeah,
you got to come up with some green huh. They win the bid
and they step forward and they actually pay for the bid right there before we
go into the next morn. No check, No plastic got to be green,
right, can we do that? Well, we do it because the
statutes tell us to do it. But yes, and they get the deed
within just what three days I think wins here through a day the d's are
filed. Yow, wow, that's pretty quick. Yeah, we start processing
everything that day. So wow, that's quite an interesting thing. Now,
do you have pictures when you go downstairs to the courthouse and hold this or
do you just announce the property? We announced the property by legal description because
a lot of you know, sometimes somebody might think an address is something that
it's not if it gets turned around or whatever. So we do we do
it by legal description, and we do ask you know, if they're going
to bid on something, to make sure you've done your homework on it,
um, make sure you know what leans are against it, um. Make
sure you know that it is that property that you're wanting, you know,
because we've had a lot of instances where somebody's bought something and then they went
and looked at it and you know, come to find out it's a burnt
house or it's an empty lot when they thought it had something on it,
So that that can be a bad situation you might have relived in right right
now, is there any way that how did that get rectified? And somebody
decides, oh, I've made a mistake. You can't do that, and
will you decide a final right right? Once the cell is over, it
is a final deal, um, yeah, because that you know, at
that time we start process seeing the paperwork, getting the deeds ready, getting
them filed, so it's kind of a done deal once the once the sale
ends. How often do we do this every year. Once a year's y're
always the second Monday in June. Always the second Monday is the way I
like Oklahoma because it doesn't change much, right, you know everything? Yes,
yeah you can, you can bank on it. And you guys got
to really put in a little bit of homework hours, I guess to get
this ready, don't you. There's a lot of research that goes in.
You have to look up the people and the legal descriptions and see what leans
are on it. And then we try to we have to figure out where
it's located so that the sheriff's office can post the signs. Um. So
that's a big dual. Oh yeah, So so the sheriff's office is one
going out there, you know, acting like the real tour a little bit.
Yeah, they get to go out and host the signs. God's going,
yeah, you hear that. But what happens Let's say you got a
deal that folks just can't refuse, but they do, they refuse it anyway,
what happens to the unsold property? What goes on there the unsolved property?
Um, if we don't get a bit on it, then it becomes
county owned property, and then the county is responsible for mowing and cleaning and
doing all of that. So they don't want to do that, and we
don't want to do that now, and so m we hold another cell after
the resell um it's called the Commissioner's cell. And so it's a little different
process than the resale. So, um, you know, we try to
we try to get them sold. It's they go for a little bit cheaper.
We can do them for less than the taxes at that point, um,
just to try to get them sold and get them back on the tax
role because once they become county owned property, then you know, there's there's
no taxes or anything on them. They give a cost, they do,
they become a cost. Yes, wow, you see you got that play
and be here that that's that's kind of cool. That's right down. It's
awesome. But anyway, so if you're looking to perhaps invest in some property
and you want to get perhaps the deal of a lifetime, this is the
place to be. And that's going to be again, it's gonna be June
twelve at nine o'clock and it's going to be at the County Administrative Building on
Johnstone Gat the Administrative Building, not at the courthouse. Not at the courthouse
downstairs. At the administrative buildings little to the north. There you go to
have a big green sign out front that very sale's good. You direct traffic
there, signs oh yeah, this final on the sign, it'll be good.
And to bring cash to what what are the kind of like the average
prices of these things going? You know, there's really no average price.
I mean I was trying to fund sixty dollars and we sold them for forty
eight dollars. Oh wow, how did it sixty eight bucks? Yeah?
Yeah, empty lots all right. I just want to know how much I
need to put in the atua. Yeah, like I'm going to be a
big property magnate soon. But anyway, this is how it's done. And
it's called the Resale a Baton and it's the twelfth and it's at the administrative
building right there on Johnstone and you can't miss it. And if anybody has
that questions or something, can they just call the office? Absolutely, how
do we get hold of you? Eight three three seven two eight one zero
all right? And you're not going to post any photos or anything like that
on the website or the no, they can go on our website and create
the list of the properties. Oh, okay, there you go. You
have to do the looking on your own. Yeah, you do the research.
We'll provide you the list. Yeah, you can do the research.
And they can also pick up a list in our office if you know after
they don't like the computer. They don't like the computer. Yes, there's
still a healthy amount of folks in the community that don't like them. And
they'll tell you I don't like the computer. Well, this is great.
I'm glad you ladies came in and doctors a little bit. Give us a
little bit of information here too. And where can we find your office cause
we have to, uh, you know, have a question that probably needs
eyeballs on it. Where can we find you? We're at four hundred South
Johnstone and we're in room two hundred. Okay, second floor, yes,
second floor. Nice good view of the city. Yeah, very good for
listen, Jennifer. I want to thank you for being a part of our
program today and a part of the education moving forward here on this as well.
And it's always great to have you on board. And we always have
our folks from the account Again. On the first Friday of the of the
month, Todd usually does a real good job of managing things that way.
He's everywhere. Lissa Jennifer, thanks again for being with us right here on
our Community Connection program.