Craig and I continued our adventure into home buying by attending our first home auction Saturday morning. What an insane experience! I know my little blog will simply not do the experience justice.
We were surrounded by people who all wanted a deal. There were people in tank tops and others in business suits. We arrived about an hour before the actual auction started, picked up our number and sat down. Before long, the place was standing room only and the auctioneers, in tuxedos by the way, were surrounding the room. The main chatter guy was at the podium ready to begin, but not before a warm up. The room bid on the Georgia Dome and the starting price was $6 million. Before I knew it, the chatter guy started talking insanely fast and everyone around me was bidding on the fake property. The auctioneers around the room were jumping around pointing out who had bid and yelling, "HHEEEEEYYYYYYY!!!!"...just in case. A minute later the dome sold for a really high price and I was dumbfounded. What just happened?!?!?!?!?
We were only bidding on one house, we visited four foreclosed homes, but only saw one in a safe enough to live - that and the others were in such disarray that I literally had dreams about living in a home that was falling apart. Luckily, out of the 200+ homes up for auction, our home was #27. Just enough time to comprehend what was going on and get a good feel of the process. The first few homes that sold were a complete mystery to me. I didn't know what the current bid was or what the home sold for! All I heard was blahblahblahdollarsblahblahblahblahdollarsblah - SOLD for blahblahblahblahblahdollars. ACK!
By the third or fourth house, I at least knew what the sold price was and how the auctioneer increased the price, first by $10,000, and if no on bid, by $5,000. (and so forth). Craig was putting the winning bids into a spreadsheet and calculating the percentage of savings. I would expect nothing less of my darling husband. All in all, the average savings was about 37% - not bad, not bad at all. I did see one of the condemned homes we saw go for a price that I thought was ridiculous, but it sold and someone is going to hopefully fix it up.
We waited until our house went up for auction and before we even had a chance to bid, it was out of our price range! It was too funny and I looked at Craig and stupidly said, "You didn't bid!" Duh, it went for around $35,000 more than we were willing to go. 45 seconds after the house went up for auction, a lady across the room won the house.
We watched about 85 houses or so and some of the properties went for around $10,000, that in addition to the earnest money meant that properties went for $15,000. I could not believe it. Granted, the homes were probably in unsafe places to live and had who knows what living inside, but the value of the land had to be more than what it went for. I seriously wanted to throw out a bid for one of them...A plot of land for $15,000!!!!!
So, all in all, the experience was fascinatingly bizarre and educational. Craig and I went into the auction knowing that we would probably be outbid, and honestly, the house went for a fair price. I just hope the person who won the house knows there are termites.
Maybe Craig and I will attend another auction, maybe not. There are great deals to be had, and we do want a home of our own to start building equity versus throwing it to our apartment complex each month. We'll see what happens.
2 comments:
wow!! i can't believe you guys went to a real auction! i've always wanted to do that... well, i guess i saw one or two at the livestock show, but i've always wanted to see one of those fancy ones, like for christie's, where people bid on incredibly $$$ art.
that is awesome. sounds like it was a good time, anyway! keep us updated on the house hunt :) if my real estate agent worked in Atlanta I'd recommend her to you!
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