NO SALE

On October 24, 2009, I attended a land sale of over 900 acres of land located in the area of Chuck-A-Luck where our ancestors settled about 1830. The acreage auctioned included all of the former Silas Wade homeplace and part of the Richard Spradling and Michael Wattenbarger homeplaces. The property was open land with no structures and had been used by a paper company for many years to grow pine trees to supply a paper mill.

The paper company sold the property to a land company several years ago when property values were much higher than they are now. The land company had been attempting to divide and resell it to individuals, evidently without much success.

Below is a tract map of the land available, with indicators for both the location of Chuck-A-Luck and where Silas Wade's Homeplace was. (Note: Silas Wade's Homeplace roughly covers Tracts 3 & 4.)


When I left the auction about 2:30 PM all of the seven tracts except one had bids in place ranging from $750.00 to $1,000.00, plus a ten percent buyers premium. The seventh tract was the least desirable of all and most likely received a bid of less than $750.00.

I was not present at the time, but I was told before the close of the auction the seller exercised their right to reject all bids and not one of the above listed tracts was sold.

Below is a satellite image of a smaller area as the tract map above, and with a smaller indicator for where Silas's place was so one can better see the land of the area.


What makes this interesting is the fact that most land being advertised on the open market for sale is listed at much higher than what was bid at he auction. There appears to be a very wide discrepancy between what sellers are asking and what buyers are willing to pay. No doubt the current economic conditions have something to do with this. Might be a good time to come home to Chuck-A-Luck.