Condo owners in Gulf Shores are increasingly turning to a time tested way to find buyers for their Alabama Gulf Coast vaction properties: They're selling their condos at auction.
Sold! To the highest bidder
With 3,000 condominium units listed for sale on the Alabama Gulf Coast, some sellers are shedding the traditional approach in favor of auctioning their property to the highest bidder -- a process that speeds sales, but can come at the cost of a lower selling price.
Coastal Auction Co. sold three houses recently, and two had been on the market for at least six months. Two were in Terry Cove in Orange Beach -- one with two boat slips for $592,000 and one off the water for $367,000. The third property, an unfinished house in Martyn Woods in Gulf Shores, sold for $612,000.
Ten condo units off the water in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., near Destin, recently sold at auction for an average $215,000 each, according to William Bone of The National Auction Group in Gadsden.
"We got 80 percent of the asking price," he said.
The highest sales price was $289,000, and the least was $189,000 for the units, which were not near the Gulf and were in a two-story complex with no elevator, according to Bone.
"We think you'll be seeing a lot of us," Bone said. "We've got people down there almost full-time looking at properties."
Auction gavels had been quiet at the Gulf for at least a couple of years before Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005, according to auction firms. The phones started ringing about six months ago with inquiries from sellers anxious to sell and move on, industry experts said.
"Auctions flush out the buyers," said Jason Haynes of Coastal Auction's Gulf Shores office.
He's fielded calls from folks wanting to auction condo units, homes, raw land and duplexes. "But the majority of it has been large homes," Haynes said. "And now we hope to see several entire developments auctioned."
Coastal plans to auction 50 to 100 properties in late September, he said. They range in price from $250,000 to several million dollars and in locations from the coast to Robertsdale. Read more