SOLD! To the Highest Bidder at a Santa Monica Home Auction
March 3rd, 2008 Categories: Events, For Buyers, For Sellers, Real Estate, Real Estate News, Santa Monica
If you haven’t attended a live home auction recently, you’re like the rest of us because they just don’t take place all that often!
I witnessed my first home auction this Saturday at 710 Kingman Ave in Santa Monica. The property is a beautiful Spanish contemporary on a lovely tree lined street. The home is in great condition, 4 bedrooms with 3.5 baths in just over 3,000 square feet, on a 7,500 square foot lot. There is a beautiful tropical grotto style lagoon pool in the back, with the master balcony overlooking it. Fabulous home in a great neighborhood.
The living room was filled to capacity. It started with the expected dictation of the auction’s rules and regulations followed by a fun and LOUD practice bid for those participating in the process to get warmed up to the real deal. Yes, the Santa Monica Pier was auctioned off.
Opening bids for the home started at $2,000,000. The energy in the room blew the roof off as the auctioneer swung his gavel in the air rambling (in his professional auctioneer way that only an auctioneer can) off the increasing prices while the (five registered bidders’) paddles shot up in succession of one another…until we reached…da da da dummm…MARKET VALUE.
SOLD! with the crack of the gavel promising the home to the winning buyer for $2,450,000.
(Understand, that with an auction home sale, the buyer pays the costs of the sale, so the price sold is the amount the seller nets not what the buyer ends up paying. The buyer actually will pay about 8% on top of the $2.4M he’s agreed to pay for the house itself.)
A home auction is quite like dealing with mulitiple offers on a property that’s for sale, with some minor differences. As one of the buyers, you know what the other buyers are willing to pay when everyone is standing in the same room at the same time with the same goal. For the seller, the process of the auction saves time and the paperwork of having to counter offer all buyer offers in writing, a process that can take days.
Most obviously illustrated for all to see is that on the day and time of the auction when real serious buyers (cashier checks in hand!) turn out for the bidding to bid against each other for said property, there is no doubt about the home’s market value once THE MARKET SPEAKS.
