Officials set minimum auction bids different ways

Surrogate's Courthouse in Manhattan, site of public administrator auctions.

Auction aficionados are well aware that each of the public administrators in the city’s boroughs holds auctions usually three or four times a year to unload properties of owners who died without a will.

Every time I publish a post about an upcoming auction along with the minimum bids, I can count on Internet chatter to the effect that the apartments and townhouses going on the block don’t add up to bargains. To commenters, the minimum bids invariably seem too high.

I got to wondering how the public administrators decide on the minimum.