FARMINGTON — A 6-acre Layton hillside is one of 27 parcels of tax-delinquent property in Davis County being made available to the highest bidder today.
The annual Davis County May Tax Sale begins at 10 a.m. at the Davis Conference Center, 1651 N. 700 West, Layton.
The 27 properties available for public auction are parcels having delinquent taxes dating back to 2007, Davis County Chief Deputy of Administration Terry Tremea said.
The auction is held by the county in an effort to recoup the taxes owed on the land. The properties are sold for a minimum bid of what is owed in back taxes, penalty, interest and cost of notification.
“The whole point of the tax sale is to collect the taxes owed,” Davis County deputy clerk Cheri Mayer said.
The largest parcel up for bid at this year’s sale is a 6-acre piece of land in Layton that abuts residential property, Tremea said. But because the land is on a hillside, he is uncertain how much of the acreage can be built on.
Since Feb. 1, the clerk’s office has been trying to track down the owners of those properties that are five years delinquent on property taxes, Mayer said.
A few months ago, there were 178 delinquent properties in the county, 58 of them homes and nine properties on commercial land, she said.
But the owners of all of those properties, after being notified either through certified mail or a personal visit — have paid their back taxes and removed their property from the May sale list.
There are no homes or commercial pieces of property on the auction list, Mayer said. The land owners have up until the auction to pay their back taxes.
“The last thing we want is for someone to lose a home,” Tremea said.
Many of the parcels are slivers of land left behind by developers in their creation of a subdivision, Tremea said.
When it comes to properties available for sale, Mayer said, this is a “pretty average” year.
If there is an impact regarding the downturn in the economy, which began in 2008, any effect from it would not be known until next year because of the five-year period in which land owners can be delinquent on taxes before their property is put up for auction, county officials said.
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