Last week, Grant Street Group completed its third year of hosting internet auctions of tax lien certificates.
In 2004, Grant Street's LienAuction was the first-ever website to host tax lien auctions over the internet when four Florida counties Miami-Dade, Okaloosa, Orange and Volusia -- conducted sales. Since then, Grant Street has hosted internet auctions for counties in Arizona, Florida, and Maryland and the results have been overwhelming. "With LienAuction, we've been able to accomplish something no one else has been able to achieve: sell every certificate in an auction," said Grant Street's Wade Horigan, LienAuction Product Manager, "In Florida, we didn't just sell every certificate in one auction, we sold every certificate in seven out of thirteen Florida auctions this month over 129,000 certificates."
Results like these have helped keep Grant Street ahead of recent competitors. In 2006, Grant Street's LienAuction sites once again assisted in collecting more money for counties in Florida than all of its competitors combined. To-date, Grant Street has hosted successful auctions for over 315,000 certificates totaling more than $780 million.
Prior to LienAuction, bidders would gather in a public venue of the tax collector or treasurer's choosing, and bid on certificates one at a time. The auctioneer would select a certificate and bidders would shout out their bids. Typically, this process would take from several days to several weeks to complete. With the introduction of Grant Street's LienAuction, most auctions now take less than a day. "We were able to determine winners for batches of 2,500 individual certificates within seconds after an auction closed," said Horigan.
"We have received a tremendous amount of positive feedback from bidders," said Bernard Kane, Volusia County Director of Revenue, "add to that all the positive feedback from my office and you have a lot of people who love this product."
Since its inception, LienAuction has produced positive results for Citrus, Clay, Highlands, Lake, Leon, Marion, Miami-Dade, Okaloosa, Orange, Osceola, Palm Beach, St. Lucie, and Volusia Counties in Florida, as well as Baltimore, Maryland and Maricopa County, Arizona.