What is the catch in buying IRS Auction Property?

Question

Can somebody please shed light on the potential disadvantages?

Answer 1

Sometimes it is junk or junked because the owners didn't like the thought of the IRS taking it away.

At least you don't often have the dangerous baggage sometimes associated with property sold by the Drug Enforcement Agency.

I knew of one fellow that almost lost a pickup truck he bought when he reported that he found some drugs in the door that he tried to fix because the window wouldn't go all the way down. First, they wanted to know if it was all there (that he didn't keep or use some beforehand). Then they wanted to know who had access to the vehicle, thinking that family, friends, and neighbors may have put it there. It couldn't be that they didn't find it when searching it originally!

Then there are those people, and the IRS-confiscated may possibly be in this group but to a lesser extent than DEA folks, if some gang or mob person sees you riding around in their car or boat or whatever, life may become, um, difficult at odd times. I knew of someone who bought a really nice car at an auction after confiscation for drug offenses, and in the middle of one night it burned up in his driveway (and he started to put it in the garage, so they might have burned the whole house down he said).

As with any forced auction, some folks just don't like the idea of being the vulture to someone else's misfortune, especially if it is paying the government to get something they took from someone else. I heard one guy calling it dating (or words to that effect) your girlfriend's grandmother.