Sunday, July 22, 2007

The 1930’s Era Housing Auctions Are Back

In today’s San Diego Tribune, there is a ¾ page ad titled "Lender Foreclosed Public Home Auction." USHomeAuction is holding three auctions, one in San Diego, one in Ontario and one in Los Angeles. 480 homes are listed for bid in the sale. Here is a link to their homepage

The listings are for condos and single family homes. Starting bids are about 50% of the previous value which doesn’t sound bad. Bear in mind, this is just the beginning of housing auctions.

As an auction pricing guide, I would suggest that you calculate single family homes for $80 per square foot and condos for around $35. The only reason I picked these two prices, is that you can’t build a new unit for that, you are below the contractor's cost of construction.

I can remember back when you couldn’t even sell a mobile home in Las Vegas, because condo's were even cheaper. Then there was the real estate collapse during the oil boom years in Texas. At auction, you could put a 1,000 sq ft home, on your Visa card.

It will be interesting to see if they sell the whole slate. Rumor has it that a new real estate appraisers hand book is out, titled "Up in Smoke." They are promoting it with a free gallon of tar and a bag of feathers.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am very cautious. It more looks like marketing

for instance:

Address: 8 PALATINE , ALISO VIEJO , California, 92656. ORANGE County.
Square Footage: 2043 Property Type: Condo
Starting Bid: $569,000 Previously Valued To:* $1,450,000

from zillow:
Sale History
05/17/2007: $573,750
08/26/2005: $714,000
06/21/1996: $204,000

whoever appraised it, must have been wrong big time.

Jim in San Marcos said...

Hi Anon

I just scanned over the San Diego listings. Looking at the ad, the starting prices looked more like a realistic value for the houses listed.

There will be people bidding at this auction. The one you cited sounds like a real loser. It's a condo to boot.

The only thing that looks fishy to me is the financing, it's In House. So if you can fog a mirror, you have a deal--lets face it, it's vacant and not generating income so what does the seller have to lose?

I think that a year from now the starting bids will be another 50% off of the present ones. From there on it should get interesting.

If you look back to the late 1920's everyone had a no interest 5 year home loan. Then in the early 1930's the auctions started. So we've been there before.

Sackerson said...

Interesting straws in the wind. There's what looks like further useful stats and comment on Dr Housing Bubble at: http://drhousingbubble.blogspot.com/