San Diego County nets $7.5 million in property auction sales

SAN DIEGO - County Treasurer-Tax Collecter Dan McAllister today announced the county sold $7.5 million worth of property through two online property auctions.

According to California law, the county can auction a property if its owners haven't paid their property taxes for five years or more.

The majority of the 701 properties sold at the May and July auctions were timeshares, according to McAllister, drawing bidders from 17 states looking for California real estate.

"For the second year now, our online auction platform has allowed us to sell more properties than ever before, which means these parcels will soon be back on the tax roll and generating money for the many services provided by the county,'' McAllister said.

Both sales numbers and the number of properties available from the county's tax-defaulted property auctions have skyrocketed since 2014, when the city pulled in a relatively modest $1.4 million from 54 of 147 properties sold.

In 2017, the county sold 685 of 1,355 offered, bringing in a total of $7.8 million.

The city hadn't sold more than 98 properties in a single year from 2010 to 2015 and didn't hold an auction in 2016.