Auction Venues

Auction Venues

There are many settings in which an auction can be conducted. Some of these venues go back hundreds or thousands of years, many have come about only in the past dozen years. All can be effective in their own way, and there is no single best way to conduct the actual auction.

Perhaps the oldest recognized method of conducting auctions is the onsite auction. This method was reportedly used by Roman officers disposing of assets seized during military campaigns, in order to raise money for continued operations. In fact, the word auction derives from the Latin “auctio”, meaning “to drive up (the price)”. Onsite auctions are still widely employed to sell single assets, directly at the property location. A similar type is the offsite auction, where an asset may be sold in another location, such as the county courthouse, usually in the context of a foreclosure. Sometimes this is also done in a courtroom- a typical example will be a Section 363 auction under the Chapter 13 bankruptcy laws.



Another widely used variant of this is a caravan auction, where a number of assets are sold site to site under a single marketing umbrella. Many times a bank with scattered small assets will warrant this type of auction, as it is often likely that the greatest interest will be from neighbors of the various assets. Sometimes if there are several assets in a single neighborhood or area in the mix, one asset will be selected as the sale site for all of them.

A typical format we have seen in the past 30 to 40 years is the ballroom auction, where many assets from a market area are sold in sequence in one afternoon or evening. These have the advantage of being able to offer a number of diverse assets on an individual basis in a very short period of time. This format is similar and probably grew out of agricultural tent auctions where multiple parcels of land may be sold to a crowd assembled under a tent.

In the past few years we have seen the development of several online auction formats.

The most common form of online auction is the online only auction. Perhaps the most familiar form of this has been popularized by eBay over the past dozen years. This is usually known as a timed online auction. Bidding ends when the bid deadline is reached, although most timed online formats now have bidding “autoextends” where the bid deadline is automatically extended for, say, 5 minutes if there are any bids placed at the deadline, with bidding concluded when 5 minutes passes with no additional bidding.

Another variant of the online auction is the live webcast auction. In this format, online bidders have an audiofeed and sometimes a videofeed of the auctioneer, who is able to see and accept bids through the online interface, most often through an online facilitator, who acts as a ringperson, taking online bids in much the same way as an onsite ringperson would do.

Often, the live online auction will be conducted in conjunction with an onsite or ballroom auction, where the auctioneer is able to accept bids both from onsite and from online bidders. As mobile bandwidth and streamlining technology has improved and grown more efficient, we find that we are able to offer webcast bidding at onsite auctions as long as there is a mobile phone access signal. Most of our onsite auctions now incorporate live webcast bidding.

Mario Piatelli

Mario Piatelli

"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm"-Aldous Huxley.

My hero, Mario Piatelli, has been selling to the highest bidder since 1948. I met Mario in 1997 when we referred me a large real estate auction in Heard County, GA. That was shortly after I started my own auction company. Since that day, we have sent a lot of business back and forth between the east and west coast, and he has been a loyal and true friend ever since.

Whenever we do auctions in California, Mario always does the bid calling. We had a particularly challenging sale once in Monterrey County, when he sold a property for $4.1 million with only a handful of bidders in the room. We worked together on another auction in California where we ended up selling a single property for $10 million. Mario sees sales this big pretty regularly, where for us they are pretty rare!


Over the years we have become not only auction affiliates but great friends. Whenever I visit him in California, he insists on picking me up at the airport. Until very recently, he drove a 1966 Vista Cruiser wagon, which he maintained in mint condition! Now he has a new Jeep!

Mario is an honorable business man, a prominent member of his Brentwood, CA community and the ladies adore him! He is quite handsome, and walks with a proud upright posture, and self-assured presence that draws all eyes in the room to him.

He is very kind, thoughtful, and considerate, and always asks about my family. He still enjoys a good meal at a fine restaurant, although he favors his local deli in Brentwood, and often will be seen there first thing in the morning with a cup of coffee. He has never been a drinker, although he can be persuaded to share a glass of wine with friends.

He is up early every morning, and always wears his suit to the office, where he goes every morning after his visit to the deli.

Mario has years on him, but his enthusiasm for life keeps him young. He is active on the internet, and his company website is quite modern and impressive.

The National Auctioneers Association recently published an article about Mario in their November issue of "Auctioneer" magazine. The article, entitled “Oldest Active Auctioneer? NAA Member going strong at 94”.

Accompanying the article is a video produced by my wife, Marsha Howell. Take a moment and meet Mario. You won’t be disappointed.

Guest Speaker on National Commercial Real Estate Radio Show

My First Radio Appearance

On September 7th, I was invited to participate as an auction expert on The Commercial Real Estate Show, a weekly national broadcast. The taping took about an hour, but it was a very quick hour!

I shared the booth with our host, Michael Bull, a banking expert, and another auctioneer. We all wore headsets, and spoke into our own big microphones on swivel mounts. I have to admit that I was a bit nervous at first, but once the taping began, and it was time to expound on auction topics, it was fun!


I learned that radio is done in segments, and that the length of each segment is predetermined, so that the content can be interspersed with desired advertising space.

Michael’s show is very educational. He covers a wide range of topics relevant to commercial real estate, and I was honored to be able to talk about our role in selling commercial real estate.

I hope you will have an interest in hearing the show.

It can be downloaded at www.commercialrealestateshow.com/.html and will be broadcast in Atlanta on Saturday at 10am EST on the Wall Street Business Network Biz1190 WAFS or on Sunday 9am EST on Talk 920 WGKA Click on either name for a link.



And,As always, please visit our Website to view our Upcoming Auctions or Contact Us if we can help you with any of your Auction Needs!

Elements of a Successful Auction, Part V

The Ability to Promote Adequately in the Marketplace

A fundamental difference between the auction approach to marketing real estate and other methods such as ordinary brokerage is the time element. When sellers approach us with an auction assignment, it is not with the idea that they want to sell it “in the next 6 months or so” or “the next year or so” as is usually the case with brokerage listings. When a seller wants an auction, they want it done now!

Realistically, the closest we can do to now! is typically about 30 days. That means 5 days to a week to develop the marketing material, and 3 weeks to implement it.

There are several tools in our kit we can use to get the word out about an auction. The first step obviously is to identify our target markets, based upon the product types, locations, specific and general market conditions, and marketing tool availability (for example, signs are not allowed in certain communities).

Developing the correct marketing mix is an imprecise science; it is based partly upon budget, largely upon past experience, and partly upon gut feelings about what might be effective.

Some items of the marketing campaign are very low cost items, such as signage or ads in Craigslist or email blasts to our internal lists. Some are more substantial, such as a large display ad in a major market newspaper, or a direct mail campaign to 10,000 names in a radius pulled by SIC code, or net worth. Online marketing can run the range from a banner ad in multiple portals to email blasts to targeted lists from industry-specific vendors to developing a Google adword campaign to PR campaigns targeting affinity groups either online or in hard media.

Although it is always possible that an auction marketing campaign can attract sufficient bidders simply by putting up signage on the property and placing the asset on our website and promoting to our email subscribers and our exposure to search engines (a very low cost), it is usually preferable to draw interest from a variety of media by spending some money to reach prospective bidders in places they do business or leisure activities. To that end, we will develop a budget to adequately reach the marketplace.

A marketing budget is very much like an insurance policy. You can spend only a little and on auction day you may not have much protection, or you can spend the optimal amount and ensure that you have reached the market and have bidders there who are ready to compete for the asset.

The ability to promote adequately in the marketplace to get that ready, willing and able crowd is a very important element of a successful auction. Let us show you how!

Elements of a Successful Auction, Part IV

The Ability to Sell for Current Market Price

This section is perhaps the most crucial element of the determinants of a successful auction. It is the area most novices to the auction profession have the greatest difficulty with (ie brokers who are trying the auction model because their model hasn’t been working to well recently).

We receive calls every day from would-be sellers who refinanced their asset at the peak of the market, whose lenders were willing to rely on hyper-inflated appraisals and to often lend amounts far in excess of the asset’s value, so that the owners could take the extra cash out of the refinance and use it for other purposes.

They tell us they have an appraisal which “proves” the asset is worth far more than they can expect to receive for it, and that in any case they now owe far more than it is worth.

Many brokers and other novices to our profession have been to auctions and seen how the price got bid up, and expect that an auction can do the same for them. In other words, they believe that the auctioneer’s gavel is like a magic wand!

In this age of easily obtainable information, bidders can often access mortgage records and sales data and quickly determine if an asset is “underwater”, and because it is well known that the majority of mortgage balances exceed the values of the assets, most private sellers are not good auction candidates.

Until the major correction of the real estate market which manifest itself most strongly beginning in 2008, financial institutions were credible sellers. However, the severity of the downturn has created a situation where even they are often unable to sell for current prices in most markets.

Lenders with sufficient reserves are able to “write down” assets over a period of time as they market them. Given sufficient time, the lenders can sell the assets once the written down book value meets the market. Since 2008, the rate at which most lenders have been able to write down their assets has not been able to keep pace with the downward drop in the market. Thus, in many cases, their inventory of assets has continued to grow, as foreclosures have hit record levels in the same time period.

Also, since many lenders rely on appraisals to justify accepting prices in the current market, they have been hamstrung by the fact that the same appraisers who were telling them the values were unrealistically high back at the peak of the bubble are now slowly beginning to accept the current market conditions. Many appraisers are still attempting to use comparables that are “bubble” comparables from years back, and do not have the methodology to value assets in the present market. This “backwards” approach to valuation may have the benefit of justifying their poor valuations at the peak of the market, but are of little help in the current market.

As auctioneers with a long history of selling assets for cash, we know the cash values of real estate better than the brokers and appraisers who have been contributing to the financial bubble. If a seller is unable to sell for the current market price, it is our duty to inform them of that, prior to engaging our marketing services. We do not believe it reflects well upon the seller or auctioneer to undergo an extensive auction marketing campaign unless they are in a position to sell the asset for the current market price.

You can trust us to get it right!

Elements of a Successful Auction, Part III

Adequate Information

A primary difference between auctions and most negotiated sales has to do with the elimination of contingency clauses from auction contracts. In an ordinary contract, such as most brokers use, the buyer puts up a token amount of earnest money, perhaps as low as $500 to $1,000 on a contract for a price that may be several hundred thousand dollars, and allows the buyer a period of time after the contract to do his/her due diligence while he or she “locks up” the property with a contract that may not close.

Because auction terms do not provide for the buyer to be able to change his/her mind and get his/her earnest money (usually 10%) back after the auction, there must be a way for all competitive bidders to obtain all relevant information on the asset prior to bidding on it.

On smaller or less complicated assets such as lots, small rural land tracts, or investment houses, most required information can be obtained from the local tax assessor, planning and zoning authorities, the county building permit office, water/ sewer authority, etc. Bidders often contact the relevant local authorities as part of their due diligence, or we often round up this information for them and provide the resource materials such as plats, tax bills, etc at our website.

On certain assets such as industrial properties or assets where it could be reasonably inferred that there may have been exposure to undue environmental influences, we will recommend that the seller obtain an environmental report prior to our marketing period. This may be a Phase 1 report, and in certain situations a Phase 2 report may be warranted as well.

When available, we also like to post whatever appraisals the seller may have in their file to the website. Appraisals typically include a good deal of due diligence material on the property in their report, including zoning, tax information, neighborhood data, legal descriptions and plats, etc which are good shortcuts for many bidders to assess the asset. The valuation section, while interesting to look at, has little interest to the auctioneer and the bidder, since it is usually a “made up” number using obsolete or inapplicable data.

Other types of information we will post to the website include repair estimates, engineering and/or mechanical reports, soil, drill testing, and/or erosion reports, timber cruises, crop reports, aerials, surveys, rent rolls and operating statements, vacancy status, leases, our detailed terms of sale and auction contract, and any other relevant data which will lower uncertainty for a bidder.

Because we do not sell with a “post auction” due diligence period, it is incumbent on us and the seller to get as much material as possible up on the website for buyers to examine, several days or weeks before the auction date. An informed bidder is a better bidder!

Elements of a Successful Auction, Part II

Motivated Seller

In our previous section, we spoke of strong demand as a very important element of a successful auction. Unfortunately, this scenario is pretty rare in real estate auction practice. The more typical scenario is that the seller typically considers an auction as a last resort, after having listing it unsuccessfully for a period of months or years. In these scenarios, we can pretty much rule out “strong demand” as the factor in achieving success. However, there are other factors which can create the environment for a successful auction.

Perhaps the most important of these is the perception that the seller is truly motivated to sell the asset. This may sound simple enough- normally most sellers, once they acknowledge the fact that they want to sell, are to some extent “motivated” to sell. However, in the world of real estate auctions, perception is everything, and for bidders to undergo the necessary due diligence to commit themselves to an “as-is” contract with no contingencies if they win the bid, there has to be some other factor to attract them to compete openly for the asset.

If the asset is being offered on an “Absolute” basis, with no minimums or reserves, this communicates to the bidders that the seller is committed to the auction process and that the asset will sell. The Absolute seller is definitely the embodiment of a “motivated” seller.

In the absence of an “absolute” auction, bidders also tend to take the auction more seriously if the seller is a financial institution, rather than a private seller, since the perception is the transaction is not “personal” as is the case with most private sellers or investors, and that the financial institution will let it go for the market price determined by the auction. (This is not always the case; it is the auctioneer’s job to make sure that the bank’s desired prices are attainable in the market before accepting the assignment. More on that later!)

Other examples of sellers perceived as motivated include court ordered bankruptcy sales, receivership auctions, estate auctions, corporate liquidations or partnership dissolutions, and any sale perceived to be at the order of some higher impersonal authority such as the courts.

If the property is not a high demand asset, and the seller is either not motivated or perceived that way by bidders, then no amount of auction marketing is going to attract bidders to take the offering seriously and agree to compete for it.

We want to be your auctioneer, but in the absence of a high demand asset, there has to be a credible selling story in order to attract bidders. We will be happy to meet with you to see if your situation is truly that of a motivated seller!