In an unusual move, condos and town homes in the downtown area are set to be auctioned, one by one.
There have been relatively few downtown units auctioned so far. When they have been, they've sold for a lump sum. This auction gives regular folk a chance to buy.
Some units have minimum bids up to 63 percent off original sales prices.
Thirty-three condos at downtown's Ventana, at Kennedy Boulevard and Channelside Drive, and eight town homes at Kensington Park SoHo in South Tampa are expected to sell. The auction is set for noon Nov. 14 at the Embassy Suites downtown.
"We set minimum bids that are preposterously low," said Jon Gollinger, CEO for Boston-based Accelerated Marketing Partners. "We get the market into a room, and the market sets the value."
The units to be auctioned have been turned over to a court-appointed receiver, Gollinger said. The developer of Ventana's 84 units turned the keys over to its lender in June 2008. The rest of the units already have been sold.
Gollinger said his auction business is thriving. The company conducts about 50 auctions a year across the country. Many clients are lenders trying to unload units they have taken back from developers.
"You have markets that have gone down 25 percent, so the developers are out of money," he said. "There's no such thing as a successful condo project in today's market."
Here are some examples of units to be auctioned.
A 1,381-square-foot condo at Ventana has a minimum bid of $175,000. Its last asking price: $473,100.
A three-bedroom, two-bath town home in Kensington has a minimum bid of $275,000. Its last asking price: $499,000.
Last year, 171 Channelside condos were sold at auction for a total of $21.9 million. The buyer paid about $128,000 each for units that originally sold for about $200,000 to $1 million.
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