That may be true about the previous owner. I have only been to a couple, last one in September.
Me and another neighbor were going to bid on a neighbors property and give it back to him or make some deal with him but he got on a payment plan with the county the day before the sale. The upset sale is in a relatively small room at the county courthouse. We had a plan.
The amount owed was less than $5k. The neighbor has 4 small plats, his house spans 2 of them. He thought he was paying on all of them but apparently was not. Now he is.
So what do they do if it's only unpaid on one of the two plats? Cut the house in half?
That's actually a good lesson in what not to do when breaking up and platting land. Smart thing is to put the house on a small parcel with deeded access from the road, if needed and put the rest of the property on a separate parcel. At least that way if you ever get in to trouble, you can hopefully at least make the payment on the small parcel and not lose your house. A lot of my neighbors who have decent size chunks of land have done this.