Who hasn’t seen a live auction? They’re the stuff of Hollywood movies featuring bidding battles between the rich and egoistic, or business news reports about astonishingly high prices being paid for prime assets.
Though live auctions are still around, they have become old hat. Like just about everything else in this world, they have become digitized, and that means greater transparency and transaction speed for investors looking to buy and sell assets of all kinds — even entire portfolios of real estate.
Consider that about 75 percent of residential real estate in Australia is sold via auction compared with less than 5 percent in the United States. The upshot: There is still plenty of upside opportunity for real estate sales through auctions in the United States, according to Chad Roffers, co-founder and chairman of Concierge Auctions, an electronic auction house specializing in real estate.
Probably better known and publicized auction sales have involved