A "mechanism" used to obtain the best available offer(s) in the marketplace under a controlled set of circumstances. My definition of a RE auction is simple and powerful: The Firm and Time Defined sale of real estate by Competitive Bid. How you achieve this definition is irrelevant. Those in the traditional RE auction industry see generally only one way, live auction. Those in the On-line auction industry generally only see one way, on-line. Those in the RE industry generally don't see much outside of "list, wait and see" with heavy reliance on MLS. The fact of the matter is that there are 1.2M NAR member REALTORS (NAR Stat) in the USA, vs. 6,000 NAA Member Auctioneers (NAA Stat), vs. a handful of on-line auction companies attempting to build differing RE models and all of this is awesome stuff and great for the consumer of RE services.
A recent example was in the National Auctioneers Association (NAA) monthly magazine. An auctioneer wrote a letter to the legal columnist and his question was, "What is an Auction? Our state, New Hampshire, requires both a RE license to sell/lease RE and an Auctioneers license to conduct auctions. A broker, licensed only as a RE agent marketed a home using the words "by sealed bid auction, with reserve, and a 10% buyers premium." The broker used MLS, mailings and a website to promote the offering. It sounded like a duck, walked like a duck, but was it a duck? Was this sealed bid offering an auction requiring an auctioneers license, or wasn't it? If it is an auction, what factors determine when the "line in the sand" got crossed?" (Richard B. from New Hampshire)
What the auctioneer is saying, is that the Realtor was "crossing a line" into the auction industry and he didn't like that, and what legal steps can he take to ensure this does not continue in a bigger way. Remember the definition of real estate auction as we have accepted it. The firm and time defined sale of real property by competitive bid. How you achieve this goal is irrelevant. The Auctioneer is caught up in the concept of "having an auction" vs. what he is really doing, and that is, selling the property utilizing the strengths of the auction methodology. The Realtor is providing the same service to his client as the auctioneer, except the Realtor does not have the same bias about "having an auction". I agree there may be a licensing issue here, but the greater point is, the REALTOR put down his round peg and tried something new to best serve the interests of his Seller. He tried something they never taught him in RE school.
Good for this Realtor and any other Realtor in Canada or the USA that understands that not all Seller's are equal and not every situation can be addressed with the same round peg we all graduate real estate school with. But that's a whole other story that I'll write about soon.
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