$215 ‘bargain’ property still too good to be true
If you’ve ever wondered how much grief $215 can buy, just ask Allan and Sherry Snyder. That’s the price they paid at a state tax auction in 2011 for a nearly 4-acre tract of sand and sagebrush southeast of Portales where the Illinois couple had hoped to put down retirement roots. It seemed like such a sweet deal then. Six years later, it’s become more bane than bargain, a terrible reminder that if things seem too good to be true, they’re likely very bad.
You met the Snyders in an August 2014 column about how their real estate windfall blew up when the former landowners filed a complaint against them. Rachel and Francisco Valenzuela had lost the land and the mobile home on the property in the aptly named Sandhill subdivision after failing to pay property taxes for four years. The $215 price tag was based on the taxes owed.
In their complaint, the Valenzuelas alleged that the property was worth at least $25,000 and that it was “unconscionable” to allow the sale to stand. In November 2012, a trial judge ruled in the
Valenzuelas’ favor.
But the word “unconscionable” stuck in Allan Snyder’s craw. It was an attack on his honor, he said.
With only rudimentary knowledge of the law and a righteous desire to restore his good name, Snyder appealed the ruling and won in March 2014. The state Supreme Court agreed to hear the Valenzuelas’ appeal and then changed its mind, leaving the lower court’s ruling in place and the property in the hands of the Snyders.
That, though, was not the end of the matter.
We revisited the Snyders’ case in an October 2015 column. By then, the couple had given up on retiring to Portales and moved instead to Greeley, Colo.
But the Valenzuelas had not given up on the property.
Eric Dixon, the Portales attorney representing the Valenzuelas, filed more motions in the case, arguing that the state Property Tax Division had not sufficiently attempted to notify them about the impending auction over delinquent taxes — this despite the Valenzuelas being served notice in person.
State District Judge Fred Van Soelen of Clovis agreed, invalidating the deed and the sale to the Snyders and handing back the property to the Valenzuelas. The judgment was entered in December 2015. But it still wasn’t over. The Snyders continued to fight, still on their own, because they could find no lawyer willing to go against Dixon, well-known in the 9th Judicial District on the eastern rim of the state for his aggressive defense tactics — and for being censured by the state Supreme Court over trying to run over a judge with his SUV in 2011.
“If ever there has been a deliberate malicious abuse of process in New Mexico courts, Dixon has provided a crystal-clear example in this case,” Snyder said.
Dixon, though, said he’s just defending his clients’ right to raise their four children in the only house they have ever known.
In 2016, the state Court of Appeals rejected the Snyders’ appeal of the Van Soelen order, opining that the Snyders had no standing but were “necessary parties to the litigation.”
This May, Dixon filed a “quiet title” complaint against the Snyders asking a judge to order them to sign away the land once and for all — literally an effort to “quiet” any challenges or claims to the title.
“We filed so there is no misunderstanding,” Dixon said. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re just cleaning up loose ends.”
But Snyder would not be quiet. On June 19, he filed a response in the 9th Judicial District, arguing that the Valenzuelas had no right to “litigate to reacquire properties they justifiably lost for nonpayment of taxes.” So on it goes. Meanwhile, the Valenzuelas have returned to the mobile home on the contested Sandhill property, while the Snyders continue to enjoy retirement life in Greeley with no expectation of moving to Portales regardless of the outcome of their latest legal salvo.
“It’s truly a place we don’t want to live,” Snyder said. So why keep fighting? “I can’t imagine getting into a fight and backing out of it,” Snyder said. “I have to win in court for this to end.”
Even if he loses, Snyder said, he has gained a lot of insight into how New Mexico justice works, and that, he said, isn’t so good.
“I’ve run successful businesses, dealt with Fortune 500 companies, but never in my wildest dream did I imagine the courts worked this way,” he said. “I was expecting to make a well-reasoned argument in court. Well, guess what. That never gets heard. Unless you have a lot of money or a lot of time like I do, you simply don’t have access to the courts. It’s like a club formed not for the benefit of the public. The system should work for the people, not just the attorneys, not just the judges.”