Any delinquent assessment has the effect of a mortgage and shall be foreclosed and sold in the manner provided by law for the foreclosure of mortgages on real estate. In any action seeking the foreclosure of a lien against any tract or parcel of land assessed by a municipality for the construction of any project after either or both assignable certificates or bonds have been issued, if there is no other purchaser for the tract or parcel of land having a delinquent assessment, the municipality, as trustee of the fund from which the assignable certificates or bonds are to be paid, may:

A. purchase the tract or parcel of land sold at the foreclosure sale; and

B. bid, in lieu of cash, the full amount of the assessment, interest, penalties, attorneys' fees and costs found by the court to be due and payable under the ordinance creating the lien and any cost taxed by the court in the foreclosure proceedings against the property ordered sold.

History: 1953 Comp., § 14-32-21, enacted by Laws 1965, ch. 300; 1991, ch. 199, § 18.

The 1991 amendment, effective April 4, 1991, rewrote the section heading which read "Improvement district - Trustee may purchase at foreclosure of street improvement liens where bonds were exchanged for certificates - Contents of bid"; added the first sentence; substituted "or bonds have been issued, if there is no other purchaser for the tract or parcel of land having a delinquent assessment, the municipality, as trustee of the fund from which the assignable certificates or bonds are to be paid" for "and negotiable coupon bonds have been issued, the trustee of the fund from which the bonds are to be paid" at the end of the introductory paragraph; and, in Subsection B, inserted "penalties, attorneys' fees and costs" and made a related stylistic change.