Harford County's annual tax lien sale was a little quieter than usual this year.

Instead of a roomful of anxious bidders in the Harford County Council chambers (now closed off in the locked 'Black Box' at 212 South Bond St. in Bel Air), the only visible proof of the sale happening was a small group of county employees gathered around two computers and a projection screen in the treasury department's conference room.

The county held its sale online for the first time, which county officials said would make it more efficient.

Besides being more streamlined, the event Monday morning was arguably also more popular.

A total of 88 bidders signed up for the chance to bid on the 379 properties, even more than the roughly 50 participants in the sale of 324 sites last year. Only 29 properties ultimately went unsold.

"I would consider that an extremely successful sale, to end at 29," Harford County Treasurer Kathryn Hewitt said afterward, calling the number of unsold properties "partly a sign of the economy."

Unlike the auctioneers who rattled off the properties in prior years, the leader of Monday morning's sale was Mike Slaughter, president of the New Providence, Penn.-based TaxLienBidsDotCom, LLC.

Besides overseeing the three batches of properties set to be sold – plus a new, fourth batch in which all the unsold sites were again up for grabs – Slaughter was simultaneously answering bidders' questions on a chat screen, showing the flexibility of the new system.

Before the fourth batch went out to bid, he sent an e-mail blast to the 88 participants, encouraging them to bid one last time.

Hewitt said she liked how the new system worked much better.

"It's a lot more efficient for us because we had to move half our office over to another office [before]. It was a live auction," she said.

The new process "opens us up to a new, bigger group of bidders," she said, explaining that bidders previously had to drive long distances to get to the auction.

While people may have been willing to do that for counties such as Prince George's, which has more than 3,000 available properties, Harford presented less of a draw, she said.

"Do you want to drive across the state to maybe not win anything?" she said. "This opened us up to a larger audience, it makes it more efficient for us logistically, we didn't have to move staff and have security."

Hewitt said the process puts Harford in line with many other Maryland jurisdictions.

"This is the way things are being done now," she said.

Rachel Holmes, a county accountant who originally set up the idea of doing the sale online and helped run it Monday, said she also thought it went very well.

"I think this went fantastic," she said. "This is very nice, to be able to do this on the fly."

Alan Getz, treasury department attorney, was also present to make sure everything went smoothly. He seemed unperturbed by the newly digital process and said it was pretty calm on his end.

Getz wasn't surprised to see the majority of the fourth-batch of properties go unsold. He said about 25 percent of the properties in the annual tax sale usually roll over from year to year, most of them being smaller sites.

"My headaches will come later," Getz said during the sale. "It's just a matter of being here to make sure there have been no problems to be addressed. Of course, after 41 years, it's routine for me."