Sold! The Business Of Property Auctions | With special video of a live auction in Northborough
A real estate auction is actually a pretty quiet affair.
On a recent sunny but cold morning, a foreclosed warehouse/office building at 79 Lyman St. in Northborough was auctioned off by Berman Auctions & Appraisers of Worcester for $625,000 without any shouting, unintelligible fast talking or applause.
Instead 20 or so prospective buyers milled about outside the 8,000-square-foot building listening to a prerecorded recitation of the terms and conditions of sale before standing mostly silent for about 10 minutes while only three bids were made.
Done Deal
In the end, after making the first bid of $600,000, Avidia Bank of Hudson, the holder of the mortgage on 79 Lyman St., won out over a $610,000 bid with a bid of $625,000.
That, apparently, is just what Avidia wanted and was just fine with the others in attendance who left business cards with Lee A. Thompson, an Avidia vice president and senior credit analyst.
Thompson said the bank would go through the building, clean it up, take care of any necessary maintenance and “try to sell it ourselves first, before we engage a commercial broker.” So, she was happy to take business cards from potential future buyers.
Selling the property without a broker would mean Avidia wouldn’t have to pay any commissions or broker’s fees, but the bank’s goal is still to just break even, she said. And $625,000 “was a very calculated number we derived based on what we think the value of the property is less property costs, less broker’s fees when we sell it. When we do sell it, we’ll come out on a break-even basis.”
After the auction, Jim Glickman, president of Worcester commercial real estate firm Glickman Kovago & Co. showed up to inquire about the property with Thompson.
Mark H. Shear, president of Berman Auctions, said the 79 Lyman St. auction was typical in its speed and quietness. He said Berman knows as much or more than anyone about any property they sell. Ten minutes of auction time is the result of days of research and documentation.
“We get as much information out as we can so there’s no confusion. They can hear it, they can read it,” he said.
79 Lyman St. was home to Restoration Preservation Masonry, an Ashland-based company that paid $535,000 for the property in 2000, according to Worcester County land records. Thompson said the company did a lot of restoration work for historic buildings in and around Boston.
But the company just couldn’t make a go of it in Northborough.
In April, the Internal Revenue Service hit Restoration Preservation with a $156,804 federal tax lien for unpaid payroll taxes. The bank foreclosed on the property shortly thereafter.
WBJournal.com web exclusive: Check out the auction of 79 Lyman St. in Northborough.
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