FANNED by EBay flames, it was bound to happen. As buyers have regained an upper hand and sellers have started to sweat, real estate auctions -- live and online -- have caught on.
The changing market has nervous owners trying to sell quickly rather than letting their homes languish while their fears of declining values mount. Buyers, sensing the realty winds shifting their way, see bargains, something they've only dreamed of in the last few years. And then, of course, there is human nature and the thrill of bidding competition.
It has led to scenes like this one, on June 25 in Pasadena, with Kennedy Wilson auctioneer Dean Cullum bellowing, "Who'd like to open up the bid at $100,000? Do I see $100,000? Over there! Who wants to bid $125,000?" Minutes later, after a rat-a-tat-tat of climbing offers for a condo, investment partners and auction veterans Robin Morgan and Miriam Wimberly came up with the winning bid of $436,000.
"I think we got a bargain," Wimberly said. Agents say that comps for the two-bedroom, 2 1/2 -bathroom condo in 1,023 square feet suggest the sale price was right on target for the neighborhood.
Fueling the auction trend too is the higher comfort level most Americans feel using the Internet, which allows them to take virtual tours of homes they're interested in and to practice their bidding skills on EBay.
"EBay is the greatest thing that ever happened to our industry," said Steven Good, chairman of Chicago-based Sheldon Good & Co., the nation's largest auctioneer of real property. It has legitimized auctioning as an acceptable form of commerce to the masses, he explained.
More accepted as a way to sell real estate on the East Coast, the trend has taken longer to capture an audience in the West, where buyers have considered home auctions as the last-chance route to a home sale.
"So many people here think auctions are only for distressed or really bad houses," said Marti Barajas, an executive for Pacific Auction Exchange, a real estate auction franchise company. Most homes sold at auction, she said, get there because sellers chose to sell them that way.
How popular has the home-buying niche of auctions become? Gross sales of residential properties rose nationally to $14.2 billion in 2005, up 24% from $11.5 billion in 2003, according to estimates reported by the National Auctioneers Assn., an auctioneering trade group.
