Unique sites find success with auction

Posted November 5, 2016 08:16 pm - Updated November 5, 2016 08:37 pm 
By Damon Cline
Staff Writer

Damon Cline/Staff Realtor Ann Marie McManus has recently begun working with an online auction company to market high-end properties in the Augusta area. She called it one of the most "impressive processes" she has seen. 
 

Pricing a home for sale is usually a straightforward process – in most cases, it’s as simple as looking at recent sales of comparable homes nearby.

But what happens if your home isn’t “comparable”?

How do you put a price tag on a truly one-of-a-kind property?

Given that the 200-year-old home occupies a full acre in one of the city’s most exclusive neighborhoods, it definitely has value. But how much?

And how does one put a price on the intangibles, such as being listed on the National Register of Historic Places, being featured in Southern Living magazine and having architecture noted by the Smithsonian Institution?

It simply can’t be done, Paine says.

“You never know what a property is worth until someone decides to purchase it,” he said.

So Paine and his real estate agent, Meybohm Realtors’ Ann Marie McManus, decided that instead of entertaining offers from a handful of locals, they would put the property in front of potential buyers around the world through an online auction.

They went with Interluxe, a Charlotte, N.C.-based upscale property listing service that McManus used earlier this year to sell a riverfront estate.

The online reaction to High Gate so far has been overwhelming, she said, noting that nearly three dozen “serious” buyers have been identified from the more than 230 inquires.

“This kind of activity is unprecedented,” McManus said. “This is one of the most impressive processes to bring high-end buyers and sellers together that I have seen in my 33 years of selling homes here in Augusta.”

Online real estate auctions, once considered a last resort for desperate sellers and bank-owned properties, have become increasingly common in recent years as more buyers and sellers become comfortable with the process.

Online real estate firm Altisource told Forbes magazine that online home sales have been growing 25 percent annually.

Interluxe President Scott Kirk said an online auctions are simply adding “speed and transparency to the traditional model of real estate.” Whereas the average home can sit on the market for months – with high-end properties sometimes taking a year or longer – all Interluxe sales close within 45 days, with about one-third of sales occuring before the conclusion of the auction, he said.

“An auction represents finality – an end date,” he said. “When people sense an opportunity is about to close, it’s a great way to get them off the fence.”

The speedy process was what attracted Augusta financial planner Jeff Fehrman to the online auction when he sold his home in the Ferry Landing neighborhood along the Savannah River earlier this year. Like Paine’s historic Summerville estate, Fehrman’s custom-built riverfront home was something of a rare bird, from the hand-hewn logs that gave it the feel of a woodland retreat to the private deepwater dock with 120 feet of river frontage.

More people looked at the 5,300-square-foot home in two weeks with Interluxe than they did in the previous two years he tried selling the seven-figure property.

Though it’s common for Interluxe’s U.S. and Canadian auctions to attract buyers from more than two dozen foreign countries, Fehrman’s home was bought by a local – Augusta pro golfer Vaughn Taylor.

While Fehrman hoped the home would have fetched more in the auction, he acknowledged the agreed-upon sum was a fair market price.

The transparency of auctions benefit both sides, Kirk says: sellers can be confident they are getting the maximum value for the property and buyers can be confident they are not overpaying.

Though online auction platforms are most effective at marketing high-end properties, Kirk said he believes auctions will become a more common way to market all levels of real estate in the future. However, he said he believes local agents will remain a crucial part of transaction.

Interluxe transactions are “agent protected” and offer a 3 percent commission to buyers’ agents.

“We work in cooperation with listing agents,” Kirk said. “We are not a replacement, we are a tool.”

Paine, who bought High Gate in 1983 and put extensive work into the property over the years while raising his family there, wants to sell so he can downsize to a more manageable home. But before he invests in a new address, he’s counting on internet real estate marketing to help him recoup his investment in the current one.

“Interluxe is allowing us the opportunity to get to the true value in the easiest way,” he said.