Two hundred homes went up for bank auction Saturday in Ft Lauderdale by banks tired of paying taxes and upkeep on foreclosed homes; yet another sign of desperation in the South Florida housing market.
Flipping through the auctioneer's guidebook you could see a ranging of Florida homes from the most modest one-bedroom efficiency condos to five-bedroom houses worth close to a million dollar.
Example:
• A three-bedroom, two-bath home in Wilton Manors sold for $161,000. The asking price during an open house last week was $229,000.
• $177,500 for a three-bedroom house in Miami Shores that sold for $460,000 two years ago went for
• A two-bedroom house in Coral Gables that sold for $670,000 in September of 2005 fetched a bid of $300,000. The buyer declined to give his name, but said he plans to rent it out.
These homes referred to as “sale properties” by the auction company have been on the market from three months to a year.
In the trendy Waverly building on West Avenue a bidding war broke out over a South Beach condo with a water view. The asking price was $460,000 when the bank originally took it over a few months ago. It was auctioned of for $327,500..
Buyers will find out sometime mid-week. About 20% of the sales were ''absolute,'' but most of the deals struck on Saturday are contingent on the bank accepting the bid said Dave Webb, co-owner of the auction company. That means no strings attached.
Banks are highly motivated sellers these days and the bank auction company has 400 properties for sale statewide and will hold another auction in Orlando on Sunday. They'll be back in Florida in 90 days for another round of sales, Webb said.
There are several more cities in Florida, Las Vegas and Detroit that are also home to large foreclosure auctions.
The ballroom held about 300 bidders and Realtors at any given time during the four-hour bank auction and were mostly investors looking for Florida homes to flip or generate rental income. The winning bidders were escorted to a contract room behind the auction floor, where they had to put down a 5% brokerage fee. That serves as the deposit. If the bank accepts the bid, the buyer has 30 days to come up with the money. If a buyer can't get a loan, or pay cash, the deposit is lost.
Previous auctions have ended with mixed results; one hundred homes went up for auction in the same Fort Lauderdale hotel last month. There were over a thousand people there bidding very competitively.
In Miami's Edgewater neighborhood twenty units at the Platinum condo tower were put up for auction last September. The room was packed and the event was covered by CNBC but the offers were so low the developer ultimately rejected them. It is predicted that the banks will accept 85% of Saturday's bids.
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