Fast Bidding War Mops Up Homes : Housing: Rapid-fire auctioneer sells 52 luxury abodes in less than two hours. Each sold for more than $500,000, making it seem like old times in the Southland real estate market.
Would-be home buyers, tantalized by a bidding minimum of $395,000, thought they could get a recession-era real estate bargain Sunday at an auction of luxury homes.
Instead, they found themselves caught up in a bidding frenzy that seemed like a throwback to pre-recession days.
With plenty of hype and hollering, auctioneer Red Mendenhall managed in less than two hours to unload 52 spanking new Torrance tract homes for more than $29 million, California’s most valuable “grand opening” tract auction ever, promoters said.
Accustomed to a real estate market where some homes languish more than six months without a bid, the more than 900 spectators at Sunday’s auction seemed stunned by the relentless whirl of activity that ended with a house sale every two minutes. None of the homes went for less than $500,000.
“We were just blown out of the running,” said Wendell Suyama, 40, who had hoped to pick up a $460,000 bargain for his family. “At least we didn’t have to deal with that anxiety of being just $10,000 or $20,000 away from getting one.”
Despite not getting the house of their dreams, Suyama and his wife, JoAnne, said the auction of the Lomita Boulevard tract, dubbed Tuscany Meadows, provided excellent weekend entertainment.
Staff members for the Irvine-based Auction Marketing Services dashed eagerly through the crowd in the ballroom of the Sheraton Redondo Beach, relaying bidders’ offers to Mendenhall.
More agitated bidders, sometimes too worked up to wait for staff members to get to them, leaped from their seats, waving bid cards, to make sure their offers were heard.
Bidding wars were few and generally short-lived as prices shot toward--and occasionally above--$600,000.
The tract offered seven floor plans, with four- and five-bedroom houses ranging from 2,723 square feet to 3,536 square feet. Although the homes are spaced close together on small lots, bidders who toured them in the month before the auction seemed to admire the cathedral ceilings, oak wet bars and cabinets, French doors and multiple fireplaces.
With a North Carolina-accented staccato delivery, Mendenhall spit offers out as if they were nothing more than Monopoly money. He made short work of the project that developer Arthur L. Valdez originally expected would take more than a year to sell.
“Opening bid is $450,000, do I hear $460,000, I’ve got four-sixty, now four-seventy, now four-eighty, now four-ninety, we’re at five HUN-dred thousand dollars,” Mendenhall intoned. In less than 20 seconds more, bids on that house shot up to $560,000.
Sunday’s frenzied sale marked the smoothest, and certainly the fastest, part of Valdez’s four-year quest to develop and sell the homes on the former nine-acre site of Meadow Park School in Torrance.
Valdez made a variety of development proposals--early in 1988, he asked to build 174 condominiums there--before he settled on a project that satisfied the neighbors and the Torrance City Council. Construction was completed less than two months ago.
Two of the homes, which originally were priced from $599,900 to $719,000, had sold before Valdez decided last month to auction off the entire tract. Valdez allowed the buyers to back out of the contracts.
Despite taking nearly a 20% cut from his original asking prices, Valdez said he is delighted by the auction’s outcome.
“I saved a lot of money doing this,” said Valdez, who estimated it would have cost more than $2 million to wait and sell the homes individually. “In reality for us, while you don’t make what appears to be a high profit, the bottom line of an auction is not a whole lot different.”
Thrilled buyers said they figured they were getting the best part of the bargain.
“It’s quite a 49th birthday present,” said a tearfully delighted Sandy Walker, as her husband, Torrance City Councilman Dan Walker, signed a $580,000 agreement to buy the model home that had been the site’s sales office.
“It was our No. 1 choice. There aren’t any changes I would want,” she said. “It’s just perfect.”
