Buying foreclosed property at auction is not for the thin-skinned, the faint of heart or anyone with a well-developed social conscience.
It was August, a month after U.S. home sales had dropped 27 percent, the sharpest decline in 15 years. In the six months prior to that, lenders had foreclosed on more than 1.5 million homeowners.
The news was filled with stories of people losing their homes, people often with health issues and young children, and for months I refused to embrace what I knew some cranny of my brain was contemplating: buying an auction property.
But as the economy grew weaker, my self-preservation instinct grew stronger. Journalism jobs have become precious, and I’m not getting younger. I needed to be focusing on my golden years — dentures, gall-bladder surgeries and $500-a- day nursing homes — and how I would pay for them all.
Could my answer be a rental property? People who can’t afford to buy houses need to live somewhere, and that somewhere, according to occupancy statistics in many cities, is rentals.
Armed with the fact that interest rates are rock bottom, I convinced my husband that tapping my savings to buy real estate was not completely nuts.
Weeks prior the auction, I inspected condos that looked promising. I studied locations and rental rates. The day of the auction, I brought a $2,500 cashier’s check and other financial documents, as required, in case I placed a winning bid.
The auction was on a Sunday morning in a convention center ballroom. A few hundred people sat in folding chairs, their eyes glued to the auctioneer up front and the two giant screens on either side of him that displayed photos of each of the 200-plus properties as they came up for bid.
The auctioneer’s goal was to sell 30 properties every 60 minutes. Numbers exploded out of his mouth like fireworks. Scattered around the ballroom, a half-dozen men in tuxedos scoured the crowd. As soon as a bidder threw a hand in the air, one of the men would sprint to his or her side, translating, coaxing and yelling to the auctioneer how high the bidder was willing to go.
Bids started at $15,000 for one-bedroom condos, up to around $179,000 for homes once valued at $1 million.
I’d determined beforehand my ceiling on five different condos. Still, my mouth went dry as the first of them came up for bid. I let it pass, too scared to move. When bidding started on condo No. 2, I forced my hand up when I heard “$30,000,” determined to get my feet wet. That attracted the attention of one of the tuxes, who was like gum on my shoe from then on.
I dropped out of the bidding on No. 2 when the price got too high, as I did with condo Nos. 3 and 4. I was ping-ponging between disappointment and relief at the prospect of going home empty-handed, when suddenly condo No. 4 was back on the block. The previous bid had apparently fallen through.
I battled one other bidder, and won the right to purchase the 853-square-foot condo for $55,000.
My mother, who had accompanied me, was too choked up to speak for several minutes, convinced I had bid on the wrong condo.
I was so wired when I got home I ran 4 miles in 100-degree heat. It’s why I don’t go to Vegas. I’m not cut out for gambling — especially $55,000 on one roll.
On the other hand, opportunity knocks but once. He who hesitates is lost. No guts, no glory. No money, no dentures.
Mary Winter (mwinte@aol.com) of Denver, a former Rocky Mountain News writer, works for .
