No Miracles For House Auction Sellers

The Sacramento Bee has a follow-up to Sunday's auction article:

Auctioned homes' values are pounded
Gavel drops six times as bargain hunters bid below list prices.

At least six Sacramento-area homeowners who hired auctioneers to sell their houses are in escrow today after a dramatic live Sunday auction that also proved unable to sell six other homes. The results marked the region's first major venture into home auctions as a real estate downturn heads into its second year and the market slows under the weight of 15,000 unsold houses...

In the hotel conference room late Sunday afternoon, sellers and their families sat tensely as a staff dressed in formal wear unleashed a rapid-fire auction that lured buyers to offer bids in $10,000 increments. The homeowners whispered nervously, held hands over their mouths and sometimes shook their heads no as real estate agents probed them to consider flexibility in their minimum prices.

Buyers, meanwhile, largely exercised discipline as they sat up front and held to their limits. During the hourlong auction, it took only minutes to move some houses that previously had sat on the market for months. Six sellers accepted the highest bids, but there were no emotional bidding wars to make sellers' dreams of miracles come true...

Some bids were $100,000 under previous asking prices, reflecting the growing power of buyers in a market that sellers controlled for years...

...[One] house that sold had a high bid of $435,000 -- $100,000 below its listing price...

Seller John Chargin was among the half-dozen who declined to accept a high bid -- in his case, $450,000 for an Elk Grove home he listed at $549,950. But Chargin, who wants to sell the house quickly after relocating elsewhere in California, remains upbeat about his prospects. "I think I'm going to sell this house from this auction just from getting so many people through it," he said Monday. "There is no way in this market I would have gotten that many people, so we'll see."

Another house that didn't get the minimum Sunday carried a $470,000 listing price and a high bid of $360,000. Zillow.com and Reply.com value the house between $424,000 and $472,000.

Prior post here.