Tax Sale Auction

 It's been a spell since we looked at land, or homes, or anything really.  There are still possibilities out there, but honestly, we're just sick of the pattern. 

1. Find a possibility listed
2. See there's not much information to help you learn if the land is really good for you or not
3. Try to find more information
4. Fail to find enough information
5. Decide to try to find the land even though there's not enough information (maybe it will be magical?)
6. Drive a goodly ways
7. Find the land and either
1. Decide it's not for you
1. Wash, rinse, repeat
2. Decide to look into it further
1. Find out there's something terrible about the land that will likely keep you from realizing your dream of it or at least make it extremely unlikely
2. And it costs too much so even if you could do whatever you want, you can't afford it

Yep, it's disappointing to say the least.  And in case anyone out there is looking for a business idea, I have one for you.  Build a website that lists actual data that people who are looking for land need in order to find out if they want to potentially buy it.  I have many details already worked out in my head, and I'll share it all with you.  You're welcome.

Anyway, a few days ago a friend mentioned to us that we should look into tax sale auctions for land.  These are properties where whoever owns it hasn't paid taxes on it in years and the tax office is right sick of that so they take ownership of the land and auction it off, starting with the amount of money that's owed on the taxes.

This definitely leads to complicated feelings about taking advantage of someone else's misfortune.  Especially if it's a home and not just land.  Like, it's totally possible that someone simply died and no one has been paying the taxes.  It also seems possible that people live on/in the property, can't afford it, and the government is going to sell it out from under them.  In which case, that feels real icky.  So, we're not sure how to really handle all that.  Suffice it to say, capitalism is problematic.

That said, there are some properties I looked into that are up for auction next month.  There were a bunch around this body of water (turns out to be a reservoir) in Fallbrook.  At least, the postings all had basically the same information, most of which was not very helpful.  Here's a sample of the listings:

APN:	1080101200
Property Type:	Unimproved property
Deposit Requirement:	No
ID#:	0009
Address:	MISSION RD FALLBROOK CA 92028
City:	FALLBROOK
Postal Code:	92028
Tax Rate Area:	75110
Land Value:	$54,052
Improvements:	$0
Total Assessed Value:	$54,052
Assessed Value Year:	2020
Property Description:	POR NWLY OF DOC109949REC68 IN NE 1/4 OF NW 1/4 SEC 15-9-3W

See how helpful that is?  That address... so... specific.  

So, I take the APN and I put it into a search on the parcelquest website.  That gives me the following useful information: size of the parcel, and a satellite view of the parcel outlined in red.  No coordinates, no actual address, no information about how to find any of those things.  But the thing about all these bits of land was they were all around the same reservoir, and the reservoir (given the general street and satellite view) I could find on Google Maps.  I figured we could drive to the reservoir, then use Chris's parcel lines app to figure out where the various bits of land were.

If this sounds like some of the optimistic thinking I had earlier in this search and have been irritated with Chris for displaying after I gave it up... I think it probably is.  Oops.

When everyone was up and about today, we got together all the accoutrements for land searching.  And, y'all... my ass hole jeans... they don't fit anymore.  I put them on earlier this week to take the dog to the vet, and I heard the telltale signs that I'm now too big for them as soon as I sat down.  They are now more like complete-seat hole jeans.  Dang my sedentary pandemic lifestyle! 

So I had to put on leggings today.  It was either that or sweat pants.  I would have been more comfortable in sweat pants, but they generally just don't seem much like going out pants.  Not that I feel leggings are, but other people seem to, so I figured I was safer with that.  I put on my long tank top that I can pull down to cover my butt and called it square.  (Yes, you still wear a tank top here in February.)

The drive to Fallbrook is one we haven't done before.  We've eschewed finding land there before now both because it's about an hour from Chris's work depending where in town you go to, and because we heard from someone that it's basically a lot of nothing that's near nowhere.  But times have changed, and an hour commute for Chris seems a lot better than a lot of the other properties at which we've looked.  And in the middle of nowhere isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Just depends on what kind of nowhere it is.

I had programmed Chris's GPS (my phone has a battery that would give out half way) with the name of the reservoir.  That seems safe, right?  The land is around X reservoir, so take us to X reservoir.  

Happily, the neighborhood it brought us to was close to the highway but also seemed like it was miles away.  This is not bad for nowhere.  We drove up a small mountain making switchbacks and hairpin turns a bit more frequently than comfort allows.  Yes, we compared it to Lose-My-Lunch Land and also to Beaver Hollow Road, and generally agreed it was better than both.

Then we got lost in the morass of tangled thread roads despite the GPS.  Basically, the GPS told us to take a left at a juncture, but Chris didn't take the left because it looked like a drive onto Morning Song Farm's property.  No matter, the GPS redirected us up the road and to take a different left.

So we turned left onto Aspen Rd.  There was a sign, a yellow diamond sign below another yellow diamond sign that mentioned the speed bumps.  But not so much so that we actually saw them before it was too late.  So we crashed over one before getting it together to crawl at 5mph (8kph) over the second.  Then the GPS told us to turn again onto a dirt road that doesn't even show up on the map.  Now, this dirt road, it didn't look bad, but we still have trauma in our minds left over from The Invisitable Lands, and the road in question looked like it was part of someone's property.  You know Chris didn't want to tread there.  

So we drove a bit up the hill, with the GPS redirecting us again, but Chris decided that it would make more sense to go back to where we'd missed the first left turn.  Except, he forgot about the speed bumps again.  We crashed over the first (which had formerly been the second) on our return trip.

Interestingly, the GPS did not instruct us to turn into Morning Song Farms on the return trip.  It had us go all the way back to Rainbow Glen and turn onto it.  Which we did.  And then the road turned into dirt... which was pitted with deep ruts... and then a gate that was closed and locked.

Can you see the gate?

Much to everyone's dismay (especially the dog's), we couldn't find a place to turn around so we had to back up the hill again to the other road.  

Back along to Morning Song Farm, the GPS again telling us to take that left.  This time we took it and bumped and bounced down the dirt road following the signs left for delivery drivers.  And then we needed to take another left... into a road with a locked gate across it.  Nope, nope, nope.  Back to the other road.

We decided to take another stab at Aspen Rd.  Again forgetting about the first speed bump (seriously, could they just paint them like other places?), we wound up a decent road past the suspect dirt road the GPS really wanted us to take.  As we crested a hill decorated with trees that were, in all likelihood, not aspens, the GPS directed us along a turn off to the right that had a low wire strung across it. 

At this point we stopped and let the dog out to pee.  We took stock of our options.  It was too far to the reservoir to walk.  But, that doesn't mean that it was the only way to the reservoir.  And besides, I'd only asked the GPS to take us there, but not to any land that was near it where the properties actually were...

We poked a point on the GPS where the plot I'd been most interested in had been shown and the GPS told us to go all the way back to the highway.  Well... ok.  At least there is another way!

This time remembering the sadistic speed bumps, we wended our way back up the hill, then back down the switchbacks with somewhat too frequent hairpin turns, to the highway and beyond.  We turned into a nice wide and beautifully paved lot where the GPS told us to circumvent this:

Ahh, nope

So we pulled over to discuss what to do.  There was clearly no way to get to the land.  Did we want to go home or... 

There's another property for auction that I was interested in.  It's actually a home.  It's a home that's smaller than our current apartment, but at least it wouldn't be an apartment.  And it has a yard where the dog could do his business.  We agreed that there was no way we could do more than drive by it, but it was only half an hour from where we were and we might as well.

Hoookay.  Off we went to Oceanside, a town that pretty much lives up to its name.  I'm sure that in California terms, it has charm, but I can't help but compare it to ocean towns in New England and, let's just say that the charm factor must be measured entirely differently.  Of course, I'm thinking of touristy New England coastal towns like Portsmouth, Rockport, and just about anywhere on the Cape.  Surely there are touristy towns on the coast here too, but I don't think Oceanside is one of them from what we saw today.  

But no matter.  If it's a home that's: cheap, near the water, won't take a million $$ to fix, we can sell it later... fine.  We found the home and it did indeed look just like the picture I'd looked up online.  It's kind of dark and unkempt looking in a neighborhood that has a zillion identical homes lined up like dominos set in a row to be pushed over later with glee.  

That's it on the right

The first thing we noticed is that it's a duplex.  One side is the address listed, the other side... not so much.  And, despite there being a garage between the two halves, the garage doors were not of the kind that could be retracted up onto the ceiling.  And the whole thing was painted in varying shades of a tone best described as earwax.

In any other circumstance (a circumstance where we'd put a lot of money into it and live in it for the rest of our lives), I think both Chris and I would say "eff no" to the house and its neighborhood.  But, depending on how little it can be bought for, it might be really worthwhile.  But the earwax color has to go.

I know that the picture doesn't look like it's not a nice place.  But compare it to the home right next to it.

All the homes in this neighborhood were of this demeanor

The home thus driven past, we turned our attention towards food.  It is Vday after all, and we should do something reasonably nice.  Right?  Ok, I was hungry.  I skipped lunch.

I was delighted when I checked my Gluten Free app to see that there were more than a few restaurants that sounded like they were owned by humans.  We decided on a Jamaican restaurant called One Love Island.

We were helped by a delightfully green haired individual who understood what gluten free meant (or seemed to) and steered me towards the whole red snapper rather than the tilapia.  I was very sad that the Jamaican patties are breaded with wheat flour (though I expected no different).  Those of you who recall the Jamaican Lady stand at the Burlington Farmer's Market get it.  Those patties are to die for!

About 45 minutes later, we pulled into our parking lot.  While I was rushing to the restroom, our jerk cat stuck his head in our food bag and tore out the fish's tail fin.  Not that I was going to eat the fins, but the cat shouldn't eat the bones and it's exasperating to have a being feel it's entitled to my food.  Of course I snatched it away from him. Thus my fish is sans fin, but it was still delicious.  A lot of work getting the bones out but that's how fishies be.

Om nom nom