Westmoreland County holds annual sale of tax delinquent property - pandemic style

Donna Oesterling sat comfortably Monday morning in a camp chair outside Science Hall on the Westmoreland County Community College campus to wait for her neighboring property in North Huntingdon to come up for bid as part of the county’s sale of tax delinquent property.

“We lived there for 30 years and never saw anyone there. I was pretty excited and I couldn’t sleep all night,” Oesterling said.

She was one of about 150 bidders who participated the annual sale, this year held off-site at the community college near Youngwood to account for required social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic.

Nearly 500 properties in arrears for two years were up for bid. Deborah Chiado, director of the county’s tax office, said 140 properties were sold netting about $1.5 million, which surpassed last year’s record sale of $1.08 million.

“I think it’s going smoothly,” Chiado said. “We came outside three times for (the auctions) of properties to accommodate large numbers of bidders.”

Auctions for properties in Lower Burrell, New Kensington and Hempfield were conducted outside in front of the building while most others were inside the large theater.

Monday’s sale was different from past years when bidders packed into a courthouse conference room for the auction. This year, auctions were conducted in small batches based on municipalities. Only bidders for those properties up for sale at a given time were permitted in the theater and were spaced out throughout the large room.

Others waited outside in front of the building for specific auctions to begin.

With the social distancing and crowd size limits, Monday’s auction took a bit longer than usual.

“It is what it is. I have no complaints whatsoever,” said James Porro of Pittsburgh as he waited outside for the properties he targeted for purchase to hit the auction block.

For first-time bidders such as Oesterling said Monday’s pandemic-related changes were of no issue as she said she didn’t know what to expect.

And after waiting several hours, she finally had an opportunity to bid.

“I didn’t get it,” Oesterling said later, noting that it was another neighbor who came in with the top bid of $4,200 to win the rights to purchase the property.