Yesterday I attended an auction for a project in Marina Del Rey called Element. It's a really cool, loft-esque building along Glencoe Ave, home to several similar buildings. The project had gone into receivership, as only 9 of 50 units had been sold, resulting in a court-ordered auction.
First a quick bit about how this type of auction is run. ALL 41 units are auctioned simulaneously, with high bids displayed on screens at the front of the ballroom. When you see that you've been outbid on your unit of choice, you submit another bid slip to a runner, who takes it to the people entering the bids.
The auction started on time at 1pm, and seemed to be running really smoothly, until it was suddenly paused at about 1:40ish, with the discovery that there were (supposedly) 3 bidders that seemed to have the same bidder numbers as other bidders (duplicates). So the auction was supposed to be paused for about 5 minutes while they sorted it out.
Five minutes turned into about an hour and a half. Three duplicates turned into, I don't even know how many.....dozens at least. They were calling bidders up to the front by number, one at a time, for what seemed to be an entire block of numbers that all had duplicate bidders. People were getting really impatient and tired of being told over and over that the auction would be back up and running "momentarily." Once everything was resolved, the guy running the auction announced that all bids that had been handed in but not yet entered prior to the break would be discarded, and you should resubmit just your last bid. Then after hearing a few people shout out comments and things, the idiot was actually dumb enough to ask a ballroom of 500 or so people "unless you have a better suggestion?" I mean, talk about inviting the lunatics to run the asylum. Everyone began yelling out different things (including "lower the buyer premium from 2% to 1%!!!"). Finally he heard someone shout out that the ENTIRE auction should just start over at square one, which he decided was the best route to go.
At that point, the problem was that a lot of bidders had burned through most of the pad of slips they were given to submit bids on (each pad with it's own unique bidder number, not counting the duplicates of course). So then he tells anyone who is short on bid slips to line up at the stage to receive additional slips...causing another huge delay. At this point, I and my client were both fit to be tied. There had been a cash bar running on the lobby deck by the marina, so they made that bar FREE, and opened up the bar in the restaurant upstairs as well, and just started serving everyone free booze, as well as announcing that the $10 valet charge would be comped for everyone. Eventually they were walking around the ballroom passing out glasses of champagne and white wine, as well as cookies and muffins.
Then, they proceeded to start the auction, with dozens of people still upstairs waiting in line for cocktails. They eventually corralled them all back down to the ballroom and the auction was full speed ahead. We didn't stay til the end after my client was finally outbid, but I can say that for me, the sales prices seemed to be exceeding what I thought they would. When all was said and done, as reported by Curbed LA, all units were sold, with an average selling price of $415/sqft, with the highest being $516/sqft for one of the largest top floor units.
It goes without saying, some people left winners, some losers. Some happy, some pissed. But man, it sure could have been run better....
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