The Stranger has details on the Press condo auction, The New Condo Market:
On average, the 15 condos in the Press buildings auctioned for about 80 percent of their listing price and over 30 percent of their starting bid.
Any readers attend?
Update: The Stranger has a humorous follow up story making me regret not going and getting some video footage, Why Pay More? :
Everyone I spoke to before the auction said they would not bid above $300,000; however, not a single unit sold for less.
Popularity: 18% [?]
Comments so far ↓
1 Amir // Dec 15, 2008 at 1:13 pm
I went just to observe but missed most of it because the time listed on the website was wrong.
It was very interesting seeing quarter-to-half million dollar items being sold on the spot like that, to mostly everyday people like me.
By my calculations, the sales I was present for ended up at 40-50% over the starting bids. There was a 2/2 on a high floor that sold for a little over 330k, probably the best deal while I was there.
2 Sophia Katt // Dec 15, 2008 at 3:40 pm
A shopping party I was with stopped in to watch. I glanced through the sales book that sat outside the bid room and noted page after page of construction problems, largely issues to do with water damage, and thought that whoever bought these units is in for years of hurt to get the building to its prudent reserve requirements per 2008/09 state law.
3 Steve S. // Dec 16, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I went to the auction and was pretty impressed with the sales prices they were able to achieve. Here were my observations:
Buyers were encouraged to arrive at the auction at 11:00 with it starting promptly at 12:00, I got there at 11:20 and all the seats were taken with people finding places to stand along the walls. The room was very cramped and I am sure it was part of their strategy to create further excitement for the auction.
Once the auction got started it only took about 45 minutes to sell all 15 homes. The auctioneer was obviously very experienced and stated that he was a second generation auctioneer; he had two assistants that ran around creating excitement by yelling when a new bit was received. By the looks of the buyers the majority of them were purchasing for a primary residence with a couple investors.
The 15 units were previously on the market for an average of $415,000 according to their price list and ultimately end up selling for approximately $344,000 each, about $71,726 off each home at a 17% discount.
I consider this to be a pretty big success for the seller since even if they could get 15 offers on the remaining homes thru traditional methods most likely none of them would have been full price and when you take into account the carrying costs it could have been worse. Also when I walked thru the available units it seemed to be some of the most undesirable inventory in the building, hence the reason they hadn’t been sold previously.
Sophia Katt – The “Sales Book” you speak of was probably the Public Offering Statement where the Seller is required to disclose all the issues found in the initial building inspection. There is also a section where it shows the steps the Seller took to mitigate those problems. If the Seller did the proper work to fix the water problems it may not be an issue in the future.
Leave a Comment