Hartford Land Rush

The link at the bottom of this email is from a PostStar story today about plans the County has to sell the 485 acre Eldridge Lane “LandFill” property.

The details of the sale not included in the story are;

The sale will conducted by Auctions International via an online auction for 60 days to be listed on two websites starting around July 22nd. These sites are auctionsinternational.com and auctionzip.com.

Auction.zip is made available to over 850,000 users. Because Auctions International pays $24,000 per year to auctionzip.com for advertising, they have preferred customer front page advertising on their state specific sites for Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, NY, NJ. and the New England states. They are now ranked #1 in NY and #6 in the nation, in the last 3 months they have received over 1 million hits.

There is a lien agreement between Washington and Warren County that says if the property is ever sold it shall be by an auction. Washington County decided to do this via an online auction in order to reach the most potential customers. Also as per this lien agreement between the two Counties, Warren Co gets 50% of the sale proceeds.

Auctions International will budget $4,000 to advertise the property which includes the above websites plus; The PostStar half page ad, Greenwich Journal & Salem Press, the three Manchester newspapers (The Granville Sentinel, White Hall Times, FreePress), Hill Country Observer, and the Lake George Mirror.

The cost of advertising will be paid by Auctions International which will be paid out of the commission they receive. The commission is a 5% buyers premium.

Washington County will also display a poster size ad for the property in the County building at the Washington County Fair.

The auction will be open for 60 days starting around July 22nd and ending Sept 23rd at noon. If you are interested in bidding please do not take my word for details in case I have an error. Please go to the websites and get specific info about the exact closing time and how to do it. This info should be up on the sites around July 22nd.

The plan is to bid this out as three separately deeded parcels. The largest parcel 241 acres will be listed first. Then 10 minutes later the next larger 129 acre parcel. Then 10 minutes later the final smaller 115 acre parcel. After this 10 minute delay between each parcel rollout, they would then be available for bidding for the next 60 days until Monday Sept 23rd.

I have been told not to expect much activity on the bidding until the last day. People do not like to tip their hand too early and it may end up looking like the Oklahoma Land Rush at the end.

At the end of the 60 day bidding for individual parcels, the bidding will close and the totals added up. 10 minutes after the close of individual bidding happens, the bidding will re-open for the entire 485 acre property. The requirement to bid will be the total prices so far added together plus another $3,000. The bidding will continue as long as a bid comes in at least every 59 seconds. If 59 seconds elapses without a fresh bid then the auction closes and high bid gets all of it.

At the end of the auction, all successful bidders will be required to submit a $10,000 deposit via credit card immediately upon notification of winning bid.
The fee for accepting the credit card payment is 4% which is what Auctions International is charge by the card provider.

There will be no reserve price or minimum bid required because any bids have to be approved or rejected by the Washington County Board of Supervisors at the Oct 18th Board meeting anyway. If the Board rejects any or all bids, then the County must pay back the advertising budget up to $4,000 expended by Auctions International.

Once I get a color flyer on the property and sale, I will pdf email it to you. Plus I will attempt to send it to the Amish communities that have been driving around Washington County lately asking about parcels of farmland 60 acres and larger. I think an Amish community would give Washington County a new unique agricultural flavor. I have been told that the Amish, even though they shun electricty/computers, etc. have agents that can represent their interests for an online auction.

http://poststar.com/news/local/county-to-auction-landfill-site-online/article_81f0865e-ecdc-11e2-9315-0019bb2963f4.html

Dana