Recently I covered the topic of how to find potential deals from the comfort of your chair. Continuing along that theme; I will be talking about s how you can find deals at upcoming real estate auctions in the Northern New Jersey market.
What is a real estate auction?
A real estate auction is an innovative and effective method of selling real estate. It is an intense, accelerated real estate marketing process that involves the public sale of any property—most certainly including those that are nondistressed—through open cry, competitive bidding.[1]
Who can hold an auction?
Auctions can be held by both private entities such as auctioneers hired by the seller or realtors or public entities such as the sheriff, municipality, and the federal government. Each entity usually utilizes one of the following three types of auctions:
1. Minimum Bid is the lowest bid (decided by the seller prior to auction) the auctioneer will accept for a property. Once that bid is reached, the property will sell to the highest bidder.
2. Published Reserve is the lowest amount that the seller must sell a property at auction, but the bidding can start wherever the bidders choose. If the Published Reserve bid is not reached, then the seller can accept, reject or counter the highest bid.
3. Absolute Auction is where the highest bidder acquires the property, regardless of the amount. There is no reserve price below where it will not be sold. Absolute Real Estate Auctions tend to attract the highest amount of interest.[2]
Where can you find out about upcoming real estate auctions?
Private Entity Auction Sources:
The National Auctioneers Association's Web site (www.auctioneers.org) or the National Association of Realtors' Web site (www.onerealtorplace.com) lists dozens of upcoming auctions nationwide. Or, www.auctionweb.com offers an online list of affiliated real estate auctioneers. Some namesake private auctioneers that continuously hold auctions in the New Jersey market are as follows:
Williams &Williams http://www.williamsauction.com/
Sheldon Good & Company http://www.sheldongood.com/
Real Estate Disposition Corp http://www.auction.com
Hudson & Marshall http://www.hudsonandmarshall.com/
Max Spann http://www.maxspann.com/
So subscribe to their email lists that way you can be update on the auctions that are coming in this area.
Public Entity Auction Sources:
Public entities auctioning real property can include sheriff sales, IRS sales, US Marshall sales, Treasury & IRS etc. The major issue that I had when I first started was finding out about them without spending hours searching each entities website. So how do you find out about these auctions so that you can act upon them quickly and easily. For that you need a system and I will give you mine.
I usually break apart this auction category into two buckets: Sheriff Sales Auctions and Other Government Auctions.
Lets attack the easy one first- Other Government Auctions. There are few good websites that compile different government department upcoming auctions:
Bid4Assets http://www.bid4assets.com/
GovSales http://www.govsales.gov/govsales/govsales/
CWAMS http://www.cwsmarketing.com/realestate.htm
Sheriff Sale is the other public entity auction that happens on a weekly basis at the county sheriff office. A sheriff sale auction happens when an unpaid money judgment such as a mortgage needs to be satisfied with the sale of the asset backing that judgment. Sheriff sale in New Jersey happen on a weekly basis at a fixed day and time in each county. So you need to keep on top of the sheriff sale websites to see what are the properties coming up at the next week’s auction. Below is the list of sheriff sale county websites in Northern New Jersey where you can find the upcoming foreclosure auctions (PS its FREE on these sites unlike Realtytrac or Foreclosure.com):
Essex County http://salesweb.civilview.com/SalesListing.aspx
Passaic County http://www.pcsheriff.org
Bergen County http://168.229.7.54/sheriff_sale.aspx
Union County http://ucnj.org/government/sheriff/sheriffs-sale-information/
Morris County http://www.mcsheriff.org/sales/
Hudson County http://www.hudsoncountysheriff.org/Sales/
Use the above resources and websites to find your next auction deal but be careful, as auction buying is a tricky and a high-risk strategy. I will be covering in the upcoming weeks on how you can complete due diligence on traditional distressed assets along with auction purchases to help minimize the risk associated with distressed asset investing.
Happy Investing
Ankit
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