A portion of the property to be auctioned is on the Carroll County side of Villa Rica.
Mirror Lake LLC originally bought the properties in 1998, though the current owner is not associated with Mirror Lake Golf Course or Mirror Lake subdivision. The five lots range in size from one to five acres and sit adjacent to the Publix on Mirror Lake Boulevard. Four of the lots are along the road northwest of the Publix-anchored retail development, the other sits directly behind it.
Villa Rica City Manager Larry Wood said the auctions will be a great deal for a developer.
“We’ve had a lot of properties that were either short sales or foreclosures that people have gotten some good deals on,” said Wood. “There has been a lot of picking up some good deals by investors and we’re going to wind up getting some jobs through this.”
A small segment of the land sits in Carroll County and was originally going to be auctioned at the Carroll County Courthouse, but a decision was made to conduct the auction in Douglas County instead.
“Most of the property is in Douglas,” said Steven Collier, an attorney with Alston and Bird LLP who is working with C&S Bank on the auction. “We foreclosed in Douglas County. There is a statute that permits you to pick a county if a property straddles the county line.”
A recently built storage facility called 4 Seasons Self Storage is surrounded by the lots on two sides. Right now all five lots are undeveloped. Each of them had fallen behind on property taxes before payments for 2010 and 2011 were made Sept. 17, 2012. Last year’s property taxes are still owed on each.
Originally, the principal amount of the purchase was $6 million, which has matured and remains unpaid. But the latest property appraisals from the Douglas County Board of Assessors have the properties valued at a combined $2 million.
The lots were drawn for development but remain vacant at this time.
“We’ve had developers that bought a lot of land at what were premium prices at the time and now some have resold for 20 and 30 cents on the dollar,” said Wood. “Somebody else is buying that property at a much reduced price. ... It will probably help turn these over to someone that wants to put a business there faster.”
The Douglas County Courthouse is at 8700 Hospital Drive in Douglasville. Property auctions are held on the courthouse steps the first Tuesday of each month at 10 a.m.
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