Government Auctions - The Moral Question of Seized Property

Say someone offers you the opportunity to buy a house at a knock down price. You may initially jump at the chance - especially if the market conditions are such that you could buy the house at this low price and, in time, sell it on for a profit which can in some case be in the high five figures, or even hundreds of thousands. It is a tempting arrangement which anyone would find hard to turn down. But imagine that you were then told that this house had belonged to a drug dealer - someone who while free had caused many people to live in misery and had profited from that misery. The house that they had lived in prior to their arrest would be that house available at a bargain price. Would you still be tempted?

For many people, the answer is a straight and undeniable “no”. Knowing what went on beneath that roof and the horrors that were a part of its history, even to the point of being why it was available for such a low price many people would have a moral issue with it, and will refuse to participate in a government seized real estate auction. This is understandable. However, if you think about it, what is to be gained by leaving the property to someone else, or to go empty? Is there not a sense of poetic justice in the criminal who benefited from human misery ending up with nothing from the whole transaction? Better, surely, than them having been able to hide it away in a paper trail.

Government auctions are in many ways a display of karma in action. Whether the criminal in question has been guilty of fraud, tax offenses or more openly violent or acquisitive crime, they will often feel that they have managed to cheat the system and get away with it. When they get their comeuppance it can be quite rewarding for the people who arrest them and for the people with the foresight to pick up their property at auction. In many ways, it restores the balance in favor of the law abiding.

To find out how you can buy government seized real estate at a fraction of the market value, check out Seized Real Estate blog for information on how to find government auctions near you.