House Auctions

We had another house auction today. This one sold for $89,900 to a nice couple who are planning on using it as a real estate investment - buy it now, while the market is down, and either rent it or sell in a few years when things have recovered some more. This is the second house we've sold in a week. This was also the second time we had tried to auction off this piece of property. The first time we tried to sell it, the minimum was unpublished, meaning that we (the auction company) knew how much the seller was willing to sell it for, but we weren't allowed to make that knowledge public. When you aren't allowed to tell someone what your actual sale price is, it makes them hesitant to bid on the property - not knowing how much it will actually cost prevents some people from being willing to participate at all. Think of it this way - say hypothetically that you wanted to buy a new car. You go to the lot, and find one you like, but when you start to ask how much the car is (so you can begin negotiating the price down) the dealer starts asking you how much you would be willing to pay for it. This would be fine, if you were talking with them about buying a couch, or something smaller. But when you are dealing with a major investment (like a car, a house, etc) its usually better for the buyer to know what they are getting into. And if you have the attention of the buyers (like at an auction, when you want to have as many potential buyers as possible), the more open the discussion is, the more likely you are to be able to actually move the property, whether said property is real estate or roller skates. The more information you have available on a piece of real estate, the easier it will be to convince a potential bidder that the property in question is worth their time to investigate, and possibly to purchase.

Recently, we've sold about 3 houses in the past month or so. The first one was in Festus, MO. It had 3 acres, a mother-in-law apartment in the basement, a 2 car garage, and was very private - the house sat back behind its sub-division, with a quarter mile long gravel driveway, and was surrounded by trees and bushes. That property was sold with no reserve - meaning that whatever the high bid was, that was the final selling price. Basically, when a bidder hears the words "no-reserve" or "absolute auction", a knowledgeable bidder realizes that if no one else registers to bid on that property, it can be had for an extremely reasonable price, because regardless of the lack of competition, the property will absolutely sell. In turn, absolute auctions are among the most volatile, because the lack of a reserve that must be met results typically in high levels of competition, which brings a better value. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are unpublished minimums - which was the case when we first tried to sell the property we sold today. In those cases, there is a firm minimum, but beyond the seller and the auctioneer, the general bidding public is unaware of what the minimum required for purchase is. The middle ground, and the way that the majority of our real estate sales have taken place, is a published minimum, where the seller sets a price that they find acceptable for their property, the auctioneer advertises the sale with that price made public for the bidders to know how much is required to purchase the property, and then the real estate is sold to the highest bidder at or above that minimum purchase price. All three methods are viable, but all three methods have times when they are better for a particular piece of real estate as opposed to the other two methods.

Another Dollar...

...$159,900 individual dollars today, to be exact. The house auction I mentioned yesterday went splendidly. We had a total of 4 registered bidders, with around 10 people actually in attendance. The final bid came in at $145,400, with a 10% buyers premium. The opening bid we received was $75,000, and the bidding came down to two of the bidders ranging from five thousand dollar increments down to $100 dollar bids at the close. I'm going to see about getting the video of the auction uploaded to youtube and putting a link on here in a future post.

Take that, housing market and crazy economy!

Another day...

...another bunch of comics. We finished inventory on the comics for the auction yesterday, and today we began to lay out some further plans for the auction, including possible locations.

So far, the best candidate seems to be the Ameristar casino in St. Charles - but there's nothing written in stone yet. Its a nice place though, and I would be lying if I said I wouldn't like to hold the auction there. However, the costs have to be figured in, and we need to run comparisons between various possible locations before we agree to anything. Aside from that, we've got a real estate auction tomorrow for a house in Rockhill, MO, near Manchester Blvd. The house is the one pictured above.

Alright, business talk aside, personal talk begins. I think I'm going to try my hand at assembling a bassinet today. Or maybe not, but it's gonna have to happen soon. I've been trying to get all the baby stuff - the stroller, the car seat, the crib, etc. assembled at the rate of one every other day or so, but it's been a looooong week. I think there is still one shower left to go (Lisa somehow managed to end with like, four separate baby showers), and I'm running out of room in my house. It's a good thing that children are so small when they are born, or there wouldn't be any room left in here for Julia when she shows up. I've got to clear some of this stuff out.

I get paid large amounts to play with comic books...

...take that everyone I hated in High School.

No, seriously - we've got an auction coming up at Mound City that has like, 3,000+ vintage comic books, and for the past two months, whenever I haven't been setting up an auction, running an auction, or holding an open house for some real estate we were selling, I've been spending every minute possible at work preparing for the comic book auction.

The auction is going to be ridiculous. There are individual issues of comics, that retail for more than my house costs. No, I'm not exaggerating. You want proof? Here is the record price for Amazing Fantasy #15 - for those of you who aren't comic book geeks, that is the first appearance of Spider-Man.

We've got the first Silver Age Green Lantern, the first issue of The Avengers, the first appearance of the Justice League of America, the first issue of The X-Men, and many, many others. This auction is going to kick crazy amounts of ass. Crazy, crazy, craaaaaazy amounts of ass.

As soon as we have the location and date nailed down, you'll hear about it.

Hello World

...And to begin with, a stupid old programmer's joke that I've shamelessly stolen from my father.

Hi. This is a trial run for, well, this.

I'm Rob. My facebook page is here if you don't already know me, and want to know more about me, that is a good place to start.

This blog is being set up as a complementary piece for my soon (I hope) to be launched website for my company, Lotus Marketing LLC. It is a side project for me, as I'm already gainfully employed (and overworked as it is) at my regular full time job as Marketing Director for Mound City Collectibles & Auctions LLC. A link to their site can be found here, and their Auctionzip page is here. So if you find yourself needing some fine home furnishings, household goods, collectibles, antiques, vehicles, real estate, restaurant equipment, or pretty much anything else you can think of, we've either already sold it, or we will be soon. You would be doing yourself a disservice to not check the Mound City Auctions site frequently.

Alright, spiel aside, new spiel ahead - the Lotus Marketing website will be up soon - exactly how soon is something I can't promise - mainly because of the workload from Mound City and the fact that my wife is 9 months pregnant. So, yeah, I'm kind of retarded for trying to get a website off the ground, run my normal workload at my main job, have a kid, and still try to maintain sanity and a social life. Go me.

Oh...before I forget - this blog will not be strictly advertising or work related, so if I come across like I'm selling something ALL THE TIME - well, deal with it, that's sort of how I come across in the real world. I usually am.

p.s. If you somehow stumbled across this page due to your affection for either freestyle rap, lotus automobiles, lotus flowers, lotus yoga, freestyle ssx snowboarding games, or any number of other things I haven't bothered googling that have nothing to do with what this blog will actually feature, you have my apologies, but I won't be covering those things.

You've been warned.