Property Tax Sales

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I've just started, but have already had some great experiences.   I bought a small house in Cornwall on a tax sale site unseen (a trusted agent looked at it for me, but I didn't think I could go wrong, what with the price and my bid and alll.   The house is in rough shape, but nothing some money wouldn't solve.   Then, I plan to either rent (if the cashflow works) or sell off immediately if the capital gains are good. 
My second tax sale brought me to Chatham - just today!   There were seven properties listed and 1 was redeemed before the sale, which I was actually happy about because there were small kids playing in the yard.  (That would've been really sad.)       Three were industrial condo units in a neglected building but probably ultimately profitable.   One was a really rural lot which would've gone for $5400 (maybe worth it, I don't know because this was the only one I didn't get a chance to look at) - there were no bidders.  Another was a mechanic shop with apt across from the river, which looked like a really bad area (except on the other side of the river there were improvements- but no bidders.   And lastly, a beautiful large corner lot in the town of Dresden in a beautiful area of homes which was selling for $10k.   The biddding was hot, hot, hot.   At least six or so bidders.   Some started off slow.   I lost quickly to my max amount for the lot based on my calculations of value, house building costs, water/sewer connections and comparable values in the area, (my estimates were $15k for it to be profitable on resale) but the bidding continued climbing, slowly at first, and then it jumped from somewhere around 30k to 48k which it finally sold at.   
I couldn't believe it and there were other faces of disbelief.   The guy either knew something we didn't, or had some emotional connection to the lot. 
VERY interesting day.   The open auction was much more exciting than my tender bid in Cornwall, I'll tell ya....
Thanks for the site.   It's great.   Hope my comments are worthwhile.

[Rob]

Thanks for your comments.

It sounds like you are having a fun time with bidding on these properties.

I would say either he has discovered oil on the property or he had an emotional connection to the property.  Maybe it was he childhood home.  I'd pay 10 times the value on my childhood home if there was a situation where it went into a tax sale.

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There's another posting on this site about the Chatham lot (actually in Dresden, Ontario), which seems to infer that it was a contractor who boIught the lot for 48K or so.  I knew it was going up way too high fo rme, but I hope it goes well for him.
Interesting stuff these tax sales...you can really make some money here if you watch and research propertly.