Quote History Quoted:
Been looking for a 20+ acre piece of wooded paradise for a few years now.
Thing is, everyone is looking for the same thing. Therefore prices are insane for anything decent. Really good property never gets listed...licked up by family and neighbors before it makes it to market.
If I was a waterfowl hunter the market would be perfect. Most the land you see for sale is swampy lowlands. I kind of gave up looking when I found the perfect property ... 80 acres, close to Medford, with a good size private lake in the corner for a doable price. Went to look at it and turned out the entire 80 was waterlogged. Figured it was too good to be true.
View Quote
About 2 years ago, my buddy bid on behalf of 4 of us on a 50 acre parcel of swamp that was foreclosed on by the county for unpaid taxes. There is a creek running through it, and of the 50 acres, only about 5 would
not be considered swampland, and that 5 is a hill in the center of the property, across the creek. My friend already owns 5 acres that seperates this property from the nearest road access, except for a 60' wide portion that touches the road, and the creek crosses under the road into the property dead center of that 60'. His 5 acre property is long and narrow and parallells the road, and is on the east side. He has a cabin and a new pole barn on it. His dad owns 11 acres across the road, he and his brother own lake homes about 1/2 mile away too, each on several acres. On the north side of the foreclosed 50 is a property that itself is 2 years delinquent on the taxes. On the south side is a 30 acre parcel that was owned by the same owner as the foreclosed 50, but he was able to sell that before he lost it too. It has about 15 acres high land. On the west is a large cattail marsh, then a lake. The cat tail marsh is technically a "navigable water way" on a map... but it has zero access, unless you've got wings or a huge air boat.
The 50 is good for nothing except hunting. A 650lb bear was killed on the property to the north back in 2009, and it's loaded with deer. It's accessibility issues means it's most valuble to the 3 adjoining property owners, so we figured we'd lo-ball bid on it at the auction, use it for a deer hunting camp (we already had stands on it, and a cabin right there with another 16 acres). The other 2 property owners didn't look like they'd be bidders. One can't pay his taxes on what he's got, the other just bought the 30 to the south for $40K, and had plenty of opportunity at the 50, from the same owner in a package deal. Who else would want it?
The county had it assessed at $50K. We bid $25K. We lost.
The nephew of the property owner to the north bid the full $50K, as he has access to it across his uncle's land. He paid $1K per acre for 50 acres of mosquitos & mud.... but he's a city guy, and there's critters to hunt on it.
The two years the county owned it, it was open to public hunting, so we hunted it (nobody else knew it was county land...couldn't get to it anyway). I saw a lot of deer, but no big racks, and no antlerless tags are issued in this area.