LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Troubled Little Rock apartment complex Big Country Chateau is now up for sale.
It was shut down by the city over the summer for ongoing safety violations following years of complaints. On Thursday, the Pulaski County courthouse will host an auction for the property.
Bidding starts at $3,317,577 and it will be sold as is, with the latest report showing about a dozen people still living there and most apartments boarded up.
As the Pulaski County Clerk Terri Hollingsworth's office manages foreclosure sales like Big Country's.
"We will have a public auction. Tomorrow, as they say on the courthouse steps," Hollingsworth said. "We don't know who's going to show up tomorrow. It could be, you know, 20 people, it could be just one person, so or one group. So we'll just see if we just wait and see what happens."
The starting bid comes from the mortgage company, (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, now substituted for Big Country Note LLC) and what they say they're owed from the last complex owners, Apex Big Chateau AR LLC).
So if nobody else bids, Hollingsworth said it will stay with the mortgage company. That's when financers could look for a judge to force the old apartment owners to pay up.
Court documents show that as of December, about 15 people still live at the Big Country Chateau apartments. Court-ordered receivership/management of the property ended last month.
But there's nothing in the sale that requires any action from new owners or the seller.
We asked if there was any concern about the property remaining, and Hollingsworth had a response.
"There's always that larger concern about what happens to vacant land that's in the city and in the county," Hollingsworth said. "We don't have that concern at this point and there's nothing that's in the foreclosure documents."
The auction will start at 12 p.m. on Thursday in the Pulaski County Court rotunda.