Another Trent Hills Garage Sale - Santa comes Early

[netpred]

Telephone.

 Who is it.  I don't know. A voice introduces himself.  A person who has never called you before
It was someone you never expected to get a call from.  "Bigfoot".  

After all when you lose 15 times in a row to someone; including second; half a dozen times, one can get discouraged. Then came the words you never throught you would hear. "Would you like to buy the second place bid." 

Too late if you have closed.

I also share pfm's views on selling/buying bids.

[Larry]

After all when you lose 15 times in a row to someone; including second; half a dozen times, one can get discouraged. Then came the words you never throught you would hear. "Would you like to buy the second place bid." 

You must be kiddin' me. Was that a joke? This is really a Merry Christmas!

Larry

[Dave2]

You must be kiddin' me. Was that a joke? This is really a Merry Christmas!

Larry

Larry:

Its not a joke.  It is true.  This is one smart dude.  I also suspect like another regular bidder locally he has ties to a construction firm that can do the basic land improvements cheaply.  

Trent Hills is rather unique in that it had a tax sale about every two months this year and also
posts more information about winners then most sites.  If you look at the earlier posts PFM gave me a hard time about this but it doesn't matter.  If you are going to seriously bid in Trent Hills your identity is exposed. Thus you can even see bidding strategies of individual bidders.  

Personally I suspect that he might have been aware that the other regular bidder was going to sit this one out because he changed his bid levels dramatically.  For example on the property I won, he put in a bid 1/3 of one he bid on a comparable property, that he had bid on in November that was within a quarter mile of this one.  (he didn't win, a numbered company won).

I look like an idiot even though I lowered my bid 20% (on the other previous property bid I was third or fourth) with the wide separation in prices between first and second bids, because I didn't expect the market price to completely collapse so much.  I am intrigued why he even bid on some of the other properties.   He also took a shotgun lowball approach on several properties that was lower then normal local market market prices for ever other property sale this year.  This makes him vulnerable to my approach which is to only bid on one or two properties that don't need a lot of work (rezoning or lot preparation) but I bid to affordably win.  

I suspect there is a source of fill coming up locally that has to find a home. (E.g. a big local road building contract) that he and the other regular bidder  know about and have access to and I don't.)  This has an additional bonus that the township may allow for disposal of the fill on properties they would not normally allow because they save money. (Every mile they have to haul the fill adds directly to the road building budget.)

One thing I did find out in our discussion.  He is a (deer) hunter and he bid high on the large Cramahe property in October because he wanted a personal hunting retreat which is only 10 minutes from home.  In his walkthrough he even saw 4 deer on it.

I suspect he contacted me so as to start the next round of negotiations with the Municipality. He and I will have to get together and it will be an interesting meeting.

[waltersland]

Merry Christmas Dave.