Las Vegas Real Estate Agent, Las Vegas Homes, Condos, Land, Commercial Real Estate and Personal Blog

Times are tough at Las Vegas high rise condos for sale market and sales don’t come easy but what happened in the Allure, Las Vegas condo auction was unreal. The builder, who is a good man, hired Auction One Las Vegas to auction off 10 high rise condo units that were advertised as buyer defaults. One of the services that real estate auction companies provide is saturation advertising which along with repeated newspaper articles about this auction brought a few people in.

I registered a client whom I had just had the privilege of meeting in person an hour before. This gentleman is a real businessman from Texas who has major real estate investments all over the world. By real, I mean he is the kind of person whose word you can take to the bank, no contracts needed and I did not sign any with him. He got my word too and he can take it to the bank. I came to the US when I was 18 and lived in the Midwest for 24 years, so I can understand Midwesterners and they understand me. I especially get along well with Texans as I am a Big 12 guy all the way and root for Big 12 teams.

I told my investor to read my last blog about Allure, Las Vegas condos and provided him with a bunch of statistics and took him to Allure to preview my favorite model. I have previously written about my favorite high rise condo model and it is the 1824 square foot and that is the only unit I asked him to consider buying and he agreed. I also set a high limit of $350,000 since there was a 10% auction premium which would bring up the final bid to $385,000 for an unfinished unit. The flooring and any decorations had to be purchased and installed by the buyer. I am not going to discuss why I set this limit but I have my reasons; I should save some info for my clients.

I did not count how many bidders attended the auction but I think it was less than 100. We all got registered and the auction started. The auctioneer stated the auction rules and that this is a reserve auction. Reserve auction means that a minimum price which is set by the seller has to be met before the bid is accepted.

The auction terms included the following “the auction is not contingent on financing, appraisal, inspections or CC&RS. It also said “the seller and the high bidder will meet in private and the seller will accept or reject the high bid” and “the 15% Earnest money deposit is non- refundable”.

I am not sure that the seller can wave contingency on CC&RS but that is for an attorney to decide.

And then the first unit that was a 1223 square foot unit on the 8^th floor came up and the bidding started at $20,000. What the heck for? Do they think Allure’s builder will sell a 1223 square foot high rise condo for $17 per square foot, ha. I told my investor that we have amateurs who don’t belong in a real estate auction in Las Vegas and this is going to be like pulling teeth. Anyway, a bunch of people, whom mostly did not have any intention of buying from this condo auction, did not know jack about real estate or high rise condo pricing in Las Vegas and even less about real estate auctions were raising each other’s bid by small amounts, when the bidding got to $40,000 a smart aleck said $41,000. Usually auctioneers ignore guys like this. But the poor auctioneer was doing his best to get this crowd going so he played with them and ended the auction for this unit at $114,000. The winning bid is an insult and has a snowballs chance in hell of getting accepted. I don’t understand, didn’t these delusional real estate auction experts have nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon?

Anyway, the same thing happened again and another condo at Allure, an 886 square foot condo brought a final bid of $145,000 plus 10% premium. The poor auctioneer finally lost patience and when no one offered a reasonable starting bid for another 886 square foot condo on 9^th floor he just pulled it. The 1563 square foot condo final bid was $200,000. Best of luck to the winning bidder on that and then thankfully our unit came up.

What happened with the condo unit that I bid on in my next blog