MARK WAITE / PVT Angela Schallenberger, pointing, conducts the auction at the Nye County treasurer's sale Wednesday. Jotting down the numbers is deputy treasurer Carrie Ebeling and county treasurer Gary Budahl, at right. Advertisement

Trudy Dettmer, with Realty One Group in Las Vegas, sold a lot for $30,000 in the Calvada North subdivision last year.

Wednesday, she bought another lot nearby with water and sewer service for only $2,600 at the Nye County treasurer's sale.

The treasurer's office auctioned off 110 properties in the first such sale since November 2004.

"It seems to be going OK. People are getting a lot of really good buys," Dettmer said. She was actively bidding on a number of properties in Calvada North, sometimes engaging in busy bidding wars.

"Calvada North is a sleeper. A lot of people from Vegas don't know what's up there," Dettmer said.

Some properties went for the minimum bid -- the amount owed in taxes -- like a pair of properties measuring 5,400 square feet that sold for $1,638 each.

Some quarter-acre lots could be unbuildable at this time -- too small to install a well and septic system according to state regulations.

On the other hand, bidding on one 8,800-square-foot Calvada North property, with a minimum bid of $1,838, went all the way up to $8,600.

Jerry Fuller, president of Great Plains Nevada West Inc., jumped the bidding up to $3,000 on that parcel, and it kept going up from there.

"There's a few speculators I guess but not near as many as they had last time," Fuller, who started a corporation in Reno to buy property, said.

"Looks like the average price was about $3,000 to $3,500 for a half-acre in the Calvada Meadows," said Mervyn Loughmiller, chief executive officer of All-American Fire, a contractor for fire protection.

That represented a real bargain, considering a sample of 19 properties in Calvada Meadows averaging 0.0475 acres was listed recently at an average price of $20,963.

Another 47 properties in Calvada North averaging almost a quarter-acre each had average list prices of $28,740 on a Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors Web site.

Don Barton, from Cactus Real Estate, wielding bid card No. 333, was another active bidder, acquiring over a dozen properties in just the two-hour morning session.

"We've been working with a couple of investors, poking around," Barton said. "It's a little more reasonable than the last auction."

Deputy Treasurer Eileen Christensen said 65 bid cards were issued. Bidders had to pay $500 for a card. The amount would be included in the purchase price.

"If it's over the minimum bid, that excess can be claimed by the buyer within a year," Nye County Treasurer Gary Budahl said.

However Deputy Treasurer Kim Lara said that's only happened once in the past 10 years.

"We're getting at least the minimum bid, which is good -- have them pay the taxes, get it back on the roll," said Angela Schallenberger, who was calling out the auction.

Schallenberger was hired by Nye County commissioners last fall specifically to handle the tax sale. Some interested bidders called her office before the auction, she said.

"We give them our Web site and tell them to go to the recorder's office, because it is their job to research the property," Schallenberger said.

Loughmiller indicated he did his homework, tracking property by using a global positioning system, then getting on the computer to the Google Earth Web site, then finally making some drive-by inspections.

Grantlyn O'Donnell came from Santa Ana, Calif., to only submit a bid on one property -- her own. She had a $1,604 minimum bid.

A few times bidding was going a little too fast for the auctioneer. A few bidders claimed they held up their cards and called out identical bids but weren't recognized.

"I'm not a professional auctioneer," Schallenberger admitted.

Sales were confirmed after bidders paid the $1.95 per $500 county transfer tax. A pile of checks sat in a box at the county treasurer's table in the front of the Bob Ruud Community Center meeting room.

Dettmer said she heard the tax sales in the future would be conducted by computer.

"That's going to eliminate a lot of people. A lot of people don't have computers," she said wistfully.

Lara confirmed the report.

"We hire a company to do it for us. We have to do obviously all the work to get it prepared, then they take it through per parcel," she said. "There's a number of counties that have done very well with it."