An Australian council auctioned off 57 vacant properties on Thursday in a bid to recoup unpaid rates and transform a town that “doesn’t really exist” anymore.
The District Council of Loxton Waikerie, situated in the Riverland region of South Australia, successfully sold all five houses, one parcel of cropping land, one parcel of wooded area conservation, and 51 vacant lots as it put money back in public coffers.
The council’s CEO, David Beaton, told Yahoo News the cheap auctions were “the only way we could do it” if the council wanted to clear the holdings and push the town forward, with many of the properties being deceased estates.
“It’s a good result for the community and we’re able to get our rates back,” Beaton told Yahoo. He explained that one buyer alone scooped up 18 properties, while another two buyers bought six each.
The majority of the buyers weren’t from the area, however Beaton hopes a sense of community will soon return once the properties are turned into something new.
“We expected to only sell about five… because there’s nothing there,” he said. “But all of it was sold.”
The result far exceeded expectations of councillors. In the days leading up to the auction, Cr Beaton said they didn’t really expect to sell any and the properties would then be passed onto the Crown. “A lot of these (parcels) are in towns that are very small, or towns that don’t really exist anymore,” he told The Adelaide Advertiser.
The cheapest land, with a size of 989 square metres, was sold off for $1,000, and the most expensive, at 1,248 square metres, sold for $40,000. One house sold for $180,000. In total, the auctions raked in $538,500 for the council.
The majority of the properties in the town were deceased estates. Source: Facebook/District Council of Loxton Waikerie
Auction ‘good start’ for council to claim back owed money
The auctions went much better than expected, with the total money raised now enough to recover the debt the council was owed. It hopes the auctions will enable a “good start” to injecting more life into the area.
Councils have the authority to sell land by public auction if a property remains more than three years in arrears, with the last time the council conducted such a large sell-off of properties being roughly 30 years ago.
The listed properties were across 17 different suburbs, and much of the land had “no water, no power, no sewer and most did not have bitumen road frontage”, leaving the new buyers with a complete blank canvas.
Other councils, including Broken Hill City Council in NSW and Peterborough Council in South Australia, have taken similar approaches recently, selling 16 and 8 properties respectively. However, the affordability and sheer number of properties sold in the Riverland region this week make the sales particularly noteworthy.
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