RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE : Auction Companies Are Branching Out to Resale Homes

Most folks have seen those big, new-home-auction advertisements that companies like Lange Financial Corp. in Newport Beach and Kennedy, Wilson Inc. of Santa Monica seem to run regularly in newspapers.

Now the home-auction business is moving into new territory--selling resale homes.

Real Estate Disposition Corp. in Santa Ana has teamed with Rancon Real Estate of Temecula in an effort to move 20 Temecula-area homes on June 23.

As with a new-home auction, loan officers, escrow agents and title company representatives will be on hand to help successful bidders wrap up the sales. The Temecula properties, unlike those in new-home auctions involving particular developments, are scattered over a wide area. Rancon is holding open houses at the properties.

Jim Lewis, a senior vice president at Real Estate Disposition, says resale-home auctions are quite common in Australia, where more than 80% of all homes are sold with a bang of an auctioneer’s gavel. Resale auctions also are used in New Zealand and Great Britain, Lewis said. His company, he said, intends to make them a valuable tool in the Southland as well.

The Temecula auction is the first major resale auction being handled by Real Estate Disposition, which began several years ago doing auctions for banks and government agencies and last year branched out to new-home auctioneering.

Now the company is so confident of the future of resale-home auctions that it has established a separate subsidiary, Auction Realty, to handle them.