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Most of the mobile homes due to go on the Missoula County auction block Wednesday morning for delinquent taxes were bailed out Tuesday.

“A gentleman showed up at my office at 8:30 this morning and wanted to take care of it,” said Annie Cathey, the county’s delinquent tax clerk who’s in charge of the annual auction.

Cathey said the Missoula man, who requested anonymity, saw an article about the pending auction in Tuesday’s Missoulian. He paid some $9,600 of the back taxes, interest and fees owed on between 30 to 40 homes, she said.

Homeowners had until 5 p.m. Tuesday to pay up or their mobile homes became the property of the county to auction off.

There’ll still be an auction Wednesday starting at 9 a.m. It’ll be for a dozen mobile homes that Cathey said have been on the block repeatedly in past years and don’t sell. She assumes the homes are abandoned.

Mobile homes are considered personal property instead of real property, and the back taxes on more than 600 of them hadn’t been paid last February.

After a series of notifications from the county, including postings on the homes themselves by the Missoula Sheriff’s Department, that number had shrunk to 61 by Monday evening.