When an auction gavel comes down today at a hotel ballroom in Loveland, it will signal the beginning of what commercial-real-estate owners, brokers and buyers might call a yard sale.
So many properties, so many types: luxury homes, industrial buildings, a retail strip, developed lots, farm acreage, even water shares and mineral rights.
Windsor developer Martin Lind, who spent 15 years turning a gravel-pit moonscape in southern Windsor into the award-winning Water Valley golf, residential and commercial community, will unload most of his holdings. And the region’s landowners, bankers, appraisers and commercial brokers are feeling more than a little edgy about the prospects.
Alabama-based J.P. King Auctions, one of the nation’s premier real-estate-auction firms, will get the sale underway at noon at the Embassy Suites Hotel and Conference Center, just on the edge of one of the land parcels that will go on the block.
“There are a lot of people whose hopes are riding on this auction coming out well,” said Chris Ruff, a partner in DRM Real Estate Advisors and a veteran commercial appraiser. “I’m not as optimistic as some people might be.”
Lind this week said the response to the widely advertised sale was “massive.”
“The ladies who handle the 800-number calls could give you an idea,” Lind said. “They’re telling us it’s one of the busiest pre-sales they’ve seen in the history of their company.”
