Westmoreland County tax auction estimated to fall just shy of record sales

Murrysville resident Nathan Boyd came to Westmoreland County’s annual auction of tax-delinquent properties Monday with the hope of snagging fixer-upper homes for him and his brother to renovate.

Boyd, 26, is about a year into his career as a commercial real estate attorney. He made his debut in property ownership at last year’s auction, purchasing a home in New Kensington.

“The house was in pretty bad shape that I bought last year,” he said, “so it’s taken a while to renovate that. It’s basically torn down to the studs.”

Boyd planned Monday to bid on single-family homes in Arnold, Delmont, Murrysville and Salem. He was one of nearly 100 bidders who lined the chairs and stood along the walls of the commissioners’ meeting room in the Westmoreland courthouse from Monday morning to afternoon, said Tim Andrews, solicitor for the county’s tax bureau.

There were 162 properties sold at the auction, generating an estimated $2.4 million — just shy of the auction’s record sales, Andrews said.

The auction is ideal for buyers looking to purchase low-cost properties, Boyd said.

“If you can get the right build also at the right price,” he said, “it’s a good opportunity if you’re looking to start in residential real estate investing.

“And it does well for the community, taking these homes that oftentimes need attention and giving that to them. It helps improve communities. It gives more people a place to live — a nice place to live.”

North Huntingdon resident Kendal Ward came to the auction to secure a piece of property that, for the past decade, she believed to be her own.

It was only when the county posted a notice about the property’s tax-delinquent status that Ward realized the land did not belong to her, she said.

“We’ve lived there for 10 years, and we thought it was our side yard, and it turned out it wasn’t,” she said.

Ward said she won the bid for the property for a few thousand dollars.

“My grandkids play in that yard. We’ve maintained it all the years that we’ve lived there and just didn’t want to lose that,” she said. “That was considerable.”