Floyd County Tax Commissioner Kevin Payne said Rome businessman Larry Martin has reduced the number of his properties that are still listed for potential sale by perhaps 25 percent.
Martin had more than 150 properties listed in legal advertisements for the sale in recent weeks. “We started off with somewhere around 175, as I sit here, I think we’re down to around 130 properties left,” Payne said. “Larry has paid a few but most of those have been paid by banks, lienholders and I am still very hopeful that they are going to get paid.”
Payne could not provide a specific number but guessed that somewhere between $200,000 and $250,000 in back taxes have been paid. “A lot of them did pay 2009, 2010, 2011 and even 2012. Some of those were pretty good sized properties,” Payne said.
The tax commissioner said he felt that all or most of Martin’s properties will have some taxes, enough to have the properties taken off the sale, by Tuesday morning.
“I’ve got a feeling that some of these banks will not pay me until Tuesday morning,” Payne said. “We could be sitting here Tuesday morning with 100 properties and they may all get paid between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. That wouldn’t shock me.”
Payne said that lienholders who are not going to let the properties be sold for taxes secure most of the properties. “The ones that aren’t Larry can probably pay enough to get them off the sale,” Payne said. “It makes me a little nervous but we’ll see what happens.”
Martin confirmed that he is making progress on the back taxes but also stressed that just because someone picks up property at a tax sale, that the original property owner still has a full year to redeem the property.
The banks loved him. Because they was eager to lend and he was eager to borrow. Now he is not bringing in enough rent money to pay all of his rent payments and taxes. Banks want to be done with him, but he can't pay them off. And the banks know they will take a hit on anything they get back. So for now they had rather he keep paying.
For him to survive, he is going to have to make major changes in the way he does business. He is going to have to sell junk property, and make other changes that I won't mention here. Changes in his organization are past due. But it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks.
Larry Martin has had over 200 HVAC units stolen and over $300k in copper theft and not one arrest. He had a $10k piece of grading equipment cut up with a blow torch and sold for scrap metal. and not one arrest, even though the police know who did it.
So yes, he is past due with some of his property tax. He has paid hundreds of thousands of tax, but is past due on some also.
But when he gets it all caught up, will he then start to get police protection?
Tell Larry he's getting what he paid for.
This is a place for people to share their opinions and our policy is 'Postings are not edited and are the responsibility of the author. You agree not to post comments that are abusive, threatening or obscene. Postings may be removed at our discretion.'
If you step over these boundaries we reserve the right to remove comments and ban a commenter - for a short time or permanently. We also reserve the right to reinstate a commenter. If you don't wish to read another person's comment or engage them - you have that right. There is also the report abuse link at the end of every comment in order to report comments you think are abusive to the people in a story or other commenters.
If we think someone is being abusive or inappropriate we will remove them.
Please don't replicate abusive, racist or cursing - because your comment will be removed also.
In short, act like adults and you have the right to your own opinion. We enjoy having all of our commenters use our website to discuss local and national issues.
Thanks.