Top Reasons to Sell a Property Using the Auction Method

Posted on June 7, 2016 by SVN

Why the Auction Method is Something to Consider

If you’re interested in selling a property “as is, where is,” the auction method is typically the way to go. Instead of marketing a property with a set listing price in a negotiated sale, some sellers opt for the time-sensitive format for a variety of reasons.

Auction sales can work in the seller’s favor by giving him or her more control over the process. After all, the seller gets to set the terms and conditions of an auction sale. Selling a property at a true market value is arguably most feasible using the auction method, and a property can sometimes end up selling at a higher price in an auction than in a negotiated sale. Three of the biggest auction format upsides have to do with timing, exposure, and financing.

Top 3 Reasons to Try the Auction Format Instead of a Negotiated Sale

The auction method speeds up the process. Because an auction is a time-sensitive sale with a set date, this format creates a sense of urgency among potential buyers. Compared to negotiated sales, auctions stimulate a need for informed buyers to act fast, encouraging competition. It may be assuring to the seller, who knows exactly when the property will sell. In negotiated sales, the seller has no idea when the sale date will arrive – it could be any number of weeks or months after the property is listed. The accelerated timeframe in the auction method means the seller enjoys a 30-45 day unconditional all cash closing. To top it off, all due diligence, inspections, and testing is performed prior to the sale.
The auction method increases exposure. Using the auction format ensures an aggressive marketing program, which is accelerated due to the limited timeline leading up to an auction. This accelerated marketing strategy can leverage the seller’s advertising investment 10-20 times in a multi-property event. Since auctions involve a large number of pre-qualified prospects, this aggressive exposure in an auction marketing campaign means the property is advertised to people who are truly serious potential buyers.
The auction method cuts costs and may increase value. The speedy process involved in the auction method reduces carrying costs, which include taxes and maintenance. Auctions also require potential buyers to pre-qualify for financing, meaning the sell-side agent does not have to waste time (and money) dealing with those who are not “true” potential buyers. Compared to negotiated sales where the asking price is essentially the highest amount the seller will be able to get for the property, the sky’s the limit for properties sold through the auction method.

Over all, auctions are worth considering, especially if the seller wants an accelerated timeframe, increased exposure to qualified prospects, and certain financial upsides that the auction method can provide.

SVN Auction Services is a provider of date-specific sales and special asset solutions. It encompasses an elite group of local and regional auction Advisors throughout the United States who specialize in areas such as foreclosures, tax sales, multi-properties, receiverships and bankruptcies. SVN Auction Services offers the industry’s most comprehensive spectrum of auction solutions—from rapid asset resolution and 30-day countdown asset sales to wide area and high impact/high promotion events. As part of one of the most recognized and reputable commercial real estate firms in the industry, SVN Auction Services is supported by SVN International, which features more than 190 locations serving more than 500 markets. For more information, visit SVN Auction Services.

This blog post was adapted from the SVN | Menish Auctions website.

[bctt tweet=”If you’re interested in selling a property as is, where is, auction is typically the way to go. #CRE” username=”svnic”]

SVN Auction Services Launches Highly Anticipated Q4 National Online Auction

Posted on October 30, 2014 by SVN

Bidding runs until November 12 with all asset types represented;

Event features one of the industry’s lowest buyer’s premium

SVN Auction Services, a provider of date-specific sales and special asset solutions, has launched its popular and highly anticipated SVN Q4 National Auction. Bidding started on October 15 at 7 p.m. ET and culminates on November 12 at 7 p.m. ET. All commercial real estate asset types are represented for this online auction event that features one of the industry’s lowest buyer’s premium of 5 percent.

The SVN Q4 National Auction addresses the needs of sellers with properties that have to be sold and closed by year-end. SVN Auction Services’ past SVN Q4 events have attracted thousands of buyers and sellers representing every state in the nation and more than 80 countries.

“This is an outstanding online auction opportunity and really epitomizes the talent, expertise and leadership of our nationwide Auction Services team,” said Kevin Maggiacomo, Sperry Van Ness International Corporation President and CEO. “Of the top commercial real estate brands, Sperry Van Ness is unique in its commitment to establish such a comprehensive Auction Services vertical. As a result, the Auction team—and the assets it represents—receives the marketing punch and visibility that only a national firm can deliver, combined with the specific strategic insight and support that only a local SVN Advisor can provide. It’s a win for everyone involved.”

This year’s SVN Q4 event includes a wide variety of quality office, industrial, retail, land, hotels, multifamily, and NNN properties, including a historic hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a fruit packing facility in Orange Cove, California, a former FedEx headquarters campus in Memphis, Tennessee, and a church and school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Assets feature a $500,000 minimum value, up to a value range of $14,000,000.

“We not only aggressively promote the SVN Q4 National Auction on a national and international level, but also on a local level where the assets are located,” explained Louis B. Fisher III, SVN Auction Services Co-Chairman of the event. “Combine this with the co-broker fees that are paid and the extremely low buyer’s premium and you see a clear picture of SVN’s ethos of commitment and collaboration. It’s who we are.”

The SVN Q4 National Auction will feature SVN’s leading-edge, propriety SVN-BID 2 WIN platform. It’s a user-friendly, secure online bidding platform that provides a set of robust features allowing users to easily search by location, value and product type.

All properties are presented in an honest, ethical, straightforward manner meant to attract only qualified, serious bidders. Financing is available for qualified assets.

This year’s SVN Q4 National Auction sponsors include Chandan Economics, a leading provider of data and analytics to commercial real estate lenders, investors, and policymakers, EBI Consulting, one of the nation’s largest, universally recognized and approved providers of environmental and engineering due diligence services to the commercial real estate investment and finance industries, Sabal Financial Group, L.P., a diversified financial services firm specializing in real estate, banking and lending, and Stewart Title, a leading provider of real estate services that facilitate successful real estate transactions.

About Sperry Van Ness Auction Services

SVN Auction Services is a provider of date-specific sales and special asset solutions. It encompasses an elite group of local and regional auction advisors throughout the United States who specialize in areas such as foreclosures, tax sales, multi-properties and bankruptcies. SVN Auction Services offers the industry’s most comprehensive spectrum of auction solutions—from rapid asset resolution and 30-day countdown asset sales to wide area and high impact/high promotion events. As part of one of the most recognized and reputable commercial real estate firms in the industry, SVN Auction Services is supported by SVN International’s more than 800 commercial real estate advisors throughout the nation. This relationship provides outstanding opportunities for SVN Auction Services to serve clients needing to move assets in accelerated timeframes and creates significant value for buyers and sellers. For more information, visit SVN Auction Services.

5 for Friday with Louis Fisher, CAI with Sperry Van Ness Auction Services

Posted on August 29, 2014 by SVN

This week, our 5 for Friday features Louis Fisher, CAI, National Director/Founding Member of Sperry Van Ness^®Auction Services as he and his team prepare for the upcoming Q4 National Auction, a nationwide end-of-year online event sponsored by Sperry Van Ness International Corporation (SVNIC).

Louis Fisher | National Director | SVN Auction Services

1. What is your geographic market and product speciality?

My core product specialty is Government Contracts focused on 363 sales and auctions, as structured in the Federal Bankruptcy Code for the United States Bankruptcy Court, located throughout the country. I have performed services and successful sales in 21 different districts. Another product I service is State Court Receiverships which are often a prelude to a Chapter 11 proceeding in Bankruptcy.

2. What’s your latest best practice tip that you can share?

There is power and reward in saying “No” to a potential client or customer when you are unable to properly manage their expectations.

3. What’s been the biggest change over on how you run your business in the past decade?

Without question the biggest change has been the power of online technology. Today’s buyers are very accustomed to underwriting and purchasing assets online from the comfort of their office or home. The due diligence review process has also been made easier and less time intensive by the use of data rooms/document vaults. In terms of marketing and advertising a new asset for auction, online exposure has been extremely more cost effective as compared to traditional methods.

We were very aware of utilizing all available online technologies with the Q4 National Auction. We have set up a dedicated landing page for the event and Advisors and sellers can use this online listing form to submit assets for the event.

4. What business book do you like to recommend to your colleagues?

“Awaken the Giant Within” by Tony Robbins and “Winning thru Intimidation” by Robert Ringer.

5. What’s a fun fact that not everyone knows about you?

I am an avid sports fan, especially college sports and love going to see games. GO GATORS!

Q4 National Auction Co-Chairman:
Louis Fisher, CAI
fisherl@svn.com
954.931.0592

Dave Gilmore, CCIM, CAI, AARE
gilmored@svn.com
504.228.6606

*All Sperry Van Ness offices are independently owned and operated.

5 for Friday with Jerry Anderson, CCIM of Sperry Van Ness Auction Services

Posted on August 15, 2014 by SVN

This week, our 5 for Friday features Jerry Anderson, CCIM who leads the Sperry Van Ness^® Auction Services team and is preparing for the upcoming Q4 National Auction, a nationwide end-of-year online event sponsored by Sperry Van Ness International Corporation (SVNIC).

Jerry Anderson, CCIM | Executive Managing Director | SVN Auction Services

1. What is your geographic market and product speciality?

The SVN Auction Services team services assets located nationwide and have a high level of expertise in areas such as foreclosures, tax sales, bankruptcies, government assignments and multi-par bidding.

We are currently in expansion mode, bringing in commercial real estate auction firms to help SVN Advisors and their clients with a date-certain, accelerated marketing approach to property disposition. The expansion is focused on the quality and expertise of auction professionals rather than a high number of auction firms on the roster. It allows SVN Auction Services to provide clients and SVN Advisors with a depth of knowledge unmatched in the industry.

2. What’s your latest best practice tip that you can share?

The best advice I can give is to consider every possible avenue to close an asset. We have all seen it before, the end of the year quickly approaches and every CRE broker starts to feel the same pressure – the crunch to close assets before year-end. Have you considered auction for those listings that don’t seem to sell? The Q4 National Auction is an excellent way to assist your clients with assets that must be sold and closed by 2015. The SVN Auction team can assist SVN Advisors helping clients understand the nuances and benefits of the date-certain sales event.

3. What’s been the biggest change over on how you run your business in the past decade?

Auction used to mean “distressed” to property sellers, but in today’s world of online bidding and accelerated marketing tactics it is a widely utilized form of selling assets. We in the United States are becoming more like the real estate market in Australia where the auction method and bidding is the natural course of events for selling property. Our last Q4 National Auction sold over $32 million of assets. I encourage all SVN Advisors to contact event Co-Chairman Dave Gilmore or Louis Fisher to grab a slot for their listing in this years event. You can also use this online listing form to submit your listings.

There are only 50 slots for the event, and SVNIC is contributing marketing monies to promote your listing in the auction, so take advantage!

4. What business book do you like to recommend to your colleagues?

Even though it hasn’t been published in some time, I am a big fan of “Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, as well as, “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. I must also add that I enjoy all of Malcolm Gadwell’s books as they make me think and reflect. His latest is “David and Goliath”, but read “The Tipping Point” first if you are not familiar with Gadwell’s work.

5. What’s a fun fact that not everyone knows about you?

I am in the world’s record book for participating in the largest general aviation formation flight in my Beechcraft Baron – 132 airplanes wingtip to wingtip. Looking back, we all landed safely without incident and we set the record, but what the heck was I thinking!

Q4 National Auction Co-Chairman:
Dave Gilmore, CCIM, CAI, AARE
gilmored@svn.com
504.228.6606

Louis Fisher, CAI
fisherl@svn.com
954.931.0592

*All Sperry Van Ness offices are independently owned and operated.

5 for Friday with Bill Menish of SVN Auction Services

Posted on June 20, 2014 by SVN

This week, our 5 for Friday features Bill Menish, CAI, AARE, BAS, Senior Advisor/Real Estate Auctioneer with SVN Auction Services out of Louisville, Kentucky.

1. What is your geographic market and product specialty?
Through SVN Auction Services, we are capable of conducting auctions coast to coast, but our office focuses on the five-state region of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. Our specialty is auctions but we execute them in many ways. In fact, we are about to roll out the brand new SVN Auction Services proprietary online bidding platform for timed and simulcast auctions. We also offer live onsite auctions, ballroom multi-property auctions and sealed bid auctions for all property types.

2. What’s your latest best practice tip that you can share?
“Use the media to your full advantage. Don’t worry, they realize they are being used.” I can say that with confidence having been a broadcast journalist in 4 states over a 20 year period with my final stop in San Diego where I was the morning anchor of the top rated morning news cast for 7 years. The walls of our SVN office are covered with framed newspaper articles and we have plenty of newscast footage saved that shows our success at inspiring the media to cover our auctions. They will cover your listings too “IF” you can find the story that their viewers and readers want to hear or see. You can load every listing platform ad buy every ad you can afford, but that free media is what is really going to help you get the word our about your property and why they should buy it. Every property has a story to tell, you just have to find it.

3. What’s been the biggest change over on how you run your business in the past decade?
In a word, it is Technology. It is not a bad word. In fact, we embrace the technological changes the industry is seeing. I heard someone the other day say that nothing has changed in the way we sell real estate or conduct real estate auctions since the economic downturn. I don’t think that could be further from the truth. So much has changed! How we get the listing, how we promote the listings and the sale, how we close them and especially how we turn that success into the next success has absolutely changed. I do believe that face-to-face time is invaluable, but with the clock moving faster than ever before, clients don’t feel they have the time, so you have to be able to connect and inspire even when you are not face to face, and often, that is through the proper use of technology.

4. What business book do you like to recommend to your colleagues?
I don’t have a business book recommendation, but rather just one word: Auctions! SVN Advisors don’t realize the powerful tool that could be in their toolbox, that if used, would deliver more checks and create extremely satisfied customers. We know why they are not using it. It is that darn word AUCTION. People have a pre-conceived notion of what it means and most of the time, they have the wrong pre-conceived notion. We are selling a c-store / gas station now with a 60 day listing that transitions into an absolute auction after the listing period. That is what this seller needed and we created a solution set that fit their needs. They can test the traditional waters, and if we cannot produce the buyer, the absolute auction will absolutely produce the buyer. Auction clients are easy to spot if you listen to them. Every seller wants top dollar, but auction clients have a need to sell in a time defined manner, or they need the kind of exposure that auction marketing produces or they have a product that will glimmer in the spotlight of national exposure with an event surrounding their sale. I promise that you have talked to a client who would have considered an auction. Maybe you just didn’t hear them asking for it, but hopefully you will now. I promise it will help you sell more properties and close more deals.

5. What’s a fun fact that not everyone knows about you?
I have run 5 marathons and my wife has run 6. If someone ever claims I cheated, it would mean that I ran a marathon without her knowing so I could catch up with her. On a serious note, I am very proud of my accomplishments in my former career where I awarded 15 Emmy’s and the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award. I tell people often that I was training to be an Auctioneer the whole time I was a newscaster, I just didn’t know it. The broadcasting business helped me hone skills that I use every day to succeed in commercial real estate.

*All Sperry Van Ness offices are independently owned and operated.