Auction powers coming soon to a neighborhood near you!
by Stefan J. Kasian
You’ve tried selling your home using the usual methods. First, for-sale-by-owner, newspaper ads and signs in the yard. Next, listing with one real estate agent after another and open houses with merely a trickle of traffic. You can wind up feeling frustrated by slow, almost nonexistent results. With nothing truly “juicy” to distinguish your home form the glut of others on the market, it’s no wonder.
Sounds like a job for “Auction Powers”! Bank trustee sales, worldwide stock and commodities markets, and the online E-bay all thrive on auction fever, the thrill of winning. “The whole world is an auction!” proclaims Kip Kane of Phoenix, a licensed auctioneer and real estate broker whose auction company has sold over five thousand properties throughout the U.S. since 1986. And with home-based businesses booming thanks to the lucrative online opportunities of E-bay, auctions are becoming increasingly accepted as the premier way of marketing and selling virtually anything.
An auction is a public sale of an asset to the best and highest bidder within a predetermined time frame. With examples dating as far back as Greek and Roman times, auctioneering is considered to be one of the world’s oldest professions. In fact, the Latin root word auction roughly translates as “to gradually increase.”
There are three basic types of auctions: 1) absolute auction, in which the high bidder wins the asset regardless of final price, 2) minimum bid auction, where an asset is sold at or above minimum stated price, and 3) reserve auction, in which a seller reserves the right not to accept the highest bid.
The lightning speed of auctioning a home saves months of burdensome mortgage and housing expenses. By choosing your auction date, you can control when your house sells, which makes planning your move a breeze. Plus, exposing your home with a sense of time urgency to a large pool of buyers will get you a fair market price, with no “ceiling” on how high the price of your house can go!
Buyers flock to auctions. Everyone loves a bargain, and no one wants to miss out. Buyers feel the urgency to show up and place an offer for this one-of-a-kind opportunity. Also, an auction environment creates an equal opportunity for all to inspect the property, the sense of urgency to place a bid, and the joy of winning to encourage higher and higher bids.
You can sell your home quickly by adopting the concept of a reserve auction. First, get your property into its finest shape for being sold. Create a “due diligence” packet for interested parties containing a home inspection, appraisal and bidding instructions. Starting with an irresistibly low opening bid, for at least two weekends market the home heavily using signs, flyers and ads. Hold an open house during the final weekend of advertising to give prospective parties plenty of time to inspect the property. Ask buyers to write down their offers on a bid sheet that everyone can see. Following the open house, call back all those who placed offers and give them another opportunity to top the current highest bid until you establish a true top bidder. Then you can confirm the meeting of the minds by signing a sales contract. Finally, celebrate your newly discovered “Auction Powers”!
Drawing upon his experiences of auctioning real estate, Stefan J. Kasian has written a manual to help others enjoy success in selling their homes.
