Home Sellers Take to Auction

With bad news about housing markets across the country rolling in almost daily and inventory piling up along with waiting times for nervous sellers, two veteran home-sellers are choosing the fast track: auction sales. And while neither of these sellers needs cash now nor is under duress to rid themselves of their homes, both believe that an auction will deliver a firm market statement about the value of their properties along with the cash to back up the appraisal.

The two are making their moves on either side of the country. Gary Feldstein, a retired physician from Ojai, Calif., has hired auctioneer Sheldon Good & Co. to dispose of the house he bought for about $1.25 million three years ago. His hoped-for take from a sealed-bid auction set for Nov. 7 -- at least $4 million, says Jamie Somers, the broker at Coldwell Banker in Ojai who sold Feldstein the house but who won't be getting the listing this time.

Somers says he is "skeptical" about how well Feldstein's sale will go, although he says he understands the seller's need for speed. "Even in the upper end, things are not selling quickly," he explains. And although Somers acknowledges that Feldstein "did quite a number" in renovating and furnishing the house, "he's asking quite a premium. The upper end is good, but I don't know if it's as good as he thinks it is." (The lower end, he says, "is horrible.")

For Feldstein, a veteran of the buy-improve-sell school of residential real estate investing, questions of market health are less important today than his desire to move on as soon as possible. First and foremost is a personal consideration: This is the house that he shared with his late wife, and it holds too many memories for him. But then there's his experience with the last house he tried to unload through "a traditional brokerage service. In eight or nine months, three people saw it and there was not a single offer." ...