Royal City foreclosure sale nets $2.3 million
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald A view of the 150 acres northwest of Royal City that auctioned for $2.3 million by the county on Friday.
ROYAL CITY — To the untrained eye, these are 150 very unimpressive acres.
Situated at the corner of Roads O and 9 Southwest about 12 miles northwest of Royal City, this patch of scrub grass, sagebrush, and tumbleweeds is valued by the county assessor at roughly $143,000, about on a par with neighboring plots.
Last Friday, however, it sold for $2.3 million at a county foreclosure auction.
“We had the largest crowd ever come to a sale,” said Grant County Treasurer Darryl Pheasant. “About 100 people showed up. We had to move it from the county commissioners’ room to the multi-purpose room.”
The 150-acre parcel was one of 35 up for auction on Friday at the Grant County Courthouse. All were three or more years in arrears on property tax payments. According to Pheasant, 34 of the foreclosed properties sold at Friday’s auction. The remaining property will be held in trust by the county until finds another seller.
The parcel, which had an outstanding tax lien of around $35,600, was one of four foreclosed properties auctioned off that were formerly owned by Peter Erikson, who owed a total of slightly more than $61,200 on the parcels.
Another one of Erikson’s parcels, a 50-acre plot, was auctioned off for $480,000, according to Pheasant.
The 150 acres was bought by 3E Land LLC, Royal City-based land company headed by John Eilers. 3E Land owns about 530 acres of irrigated and farmed land west of Royal City.
When asked why he paid $2.3 million for Erikson’s 150 acres, Eilers replied, “No comment.”
Under Washington law, the foreclosure sale could make Erikson a very wealthy man, as he has three years to apply to Grant County to claim any money over and above the outstanding tax lien. Pheasant said the bidding process on the 150-acre parcel lasted a very long time, given that the bidding was done in $5,000 increments, with bids starting at the amount of the outstanding tax bill. At one point, the treasurer said he brought the bidding to a halt to make sure the parties involved actually had the money they were bidding.
“Once a property is sold, we require immediate payment before we go on to the next bid,” he said. “We got paid that day.”
Pheasant described running tax lien and foreclosure auctions as one of “the unpleasant parts of the job” of being county treasurer.
“This is what happens when you don’t pay your taxes,” he said.