Testimonials

Bow Mar South, Colorado, 5 Day Sale Auction

Hi Kyle:

I am providing this testimonial concerning the "auction by seller" that was conducted August 27, 2011, for a single family investment property that I own located in Bow Mar South, Littleton, CO. This property has been a rental property for 4 years and became vacant in June of this year. It is one of two rental properties in this upscale neighborhood, one of the smallest and located on a half-acre lot. The property sides to a four lane, busy road. As a real estate broker and attorney, this process was very interesting to me and did net significant activity, although I believe due to dire market conditions, it did not net an (immediate) buyer. This was not a distress sale, but I was a motivated seller. At the time of the auction, 11 other homes were on the market in Bow Mar South (Littleton, Colorado), none of which to my knowledge have sold to this day. As you know, I opted for a diminished level of exposure to the market which did not include print advertisements in any news papers. I did not feel it was money well spent - we disagreed on this point and you were probably correct. The only printed ads were in the form of "baseball cards" that you handed out several days before the day of auction. We also displayed a banner on the exterior side of the fence facing the four lane road. I also did not participate in "blogging" - again my choice - I had no interest in this activity. I understand that you have had more compliant and cooperative clients, but I do believe this was a good learning experience for both of us and I have nothing but a satisfied feeling from the experience. You were the skipper with a bit of a rogue crew. After all, it was my auction, and I did want to do it my way.

In the weeks prior to the auction, your Internet search terms and domains resulted in significant activity on the web site, and I was kept informed on that by email. The web activity ramped up significantly as the auction day neared. I believe that we had a successful turnout on the day of the auction, with approximately 17 to 20 "interested persons" touring the property. Most of the buyer's appeared to be "qualified" and very interested in the concept. One "buyer" was a potential investor who lived three houses away, had known about the property's availability for months as I had a sign posted and the property was on the MLS - yet it took the auction for him to actually "thresh hold (tour)" the property. He even brought his "investor friend" to the property who also lived in Bow Mar South and said they would be making a cash offer. Another interesting fact was that only one real estate broker came to the property during the auction, which is too bad because there were a lot of buyers that may have become customers.

In any event, I believe the "auction model" is a leading edge concept that resulted in a lot of people seeing the property on a single day, rather than sitting there, a "dead" listing, like all the other listings in the neighborhood. Also, in spite of sending auction email blasts to the local brokerage community and offering to pay full commissions, it was puzzling to me why more brokers didn’t embrace this method of marketing, and instead, continue with the tired method of starting at the top of a price range and dropping the price as they go. Your model is a much more provocative, stimulating method of actually getting people to see the inside of the property. Time will tell, but I predict that the old way of selling a property, sticking up a sign and waiting for a buyer, is on its way out. This challenging housing environment cries out for a new way to sell a house - and your "Auction by Seller" is the best hope I have seen in a long time.

I might also add that I rented the home to a person who was required to wait until the auction was over and who now wants to buy the home and we are negotiating purchase option terms. This tenant witnessed the activity on the auction day and was nervous it would sell - thus I would like to think that this "activity" clenched the rental of the home, and may result in a tenant purchase.

My thanks to you and Leslie who work as a good team, making recommendations and getting the auction ready to go. I still consider the auction to have been a successful experience for my property. I recommend this process to anyone out there trying to sell their home.

Jeff K, Esquire
Littleton, Colorado
September 15, 2011

Tallyn's Reach, Colorado, 5 Day Sale Auction

Hi Kyle:

It’s the night before we close on the sale of our Tallyn’s Reach home in Aurora, Colorado, and we leave for our new assignment in Hawaii.

First, let me commend you on your unique and fine effort in proactively marketing our property for auction under your modified 5 Day Sale methodology through your www.AuctionBySeller.com online platform while simultaneously listing the property for sale.  The combined effort resulted in our getting the property under contract within sixty days of being listed, and closed within ninety days.  That’s very impressive in such a soft market.

Your approach of listing the property at the higher range of value while starting our auction bids at the lower range enabled us to generate both unrepresented direct buyer auction interest and leverage the represented agent buyer pool simultaneously. 

The end result is that we mitigated negative market pricing pressures and sold our home quickly at a price we could live with while sharing in the marketing risk and saving money on transaction fees.

Thanks for a job well done, and please feel free to use me as a reference if I can be of help in the future.

Best always, 

Joe Calabrese
August 2, 2011

Steamboat Springs, Colorado, 5 Day Sale Auction

Dear Mr. Cascioli,

I am writing to express my appreciation to you and the entire team at Barrett & Associates for making the deal happen!  We accomplished a prompt sale of a unique property at the true current market value. We did it in a difficult market – an especially difficult market for a higher priced home in a mountain community.  I am extremely glad and grateful for your assistance in the Auction by Owner model to sell the Steamboat Springs home. I had a sense that the model was the best choice for my situation, and you proved me right!

I have an overall appreciation for your team, but please pass on my thanks to a couple of key individuals --  first, for those who handled the technology and website management, it was excellent. I appreciate the “look” and presentation you gave my property. I was impressed with the updates and changes we could make to the website as the process progressed. I know that the site was widely publicized and you did far more than I could do to drive traffic to the site. I also appreciated having timely data on website traffic so we could adjust the marketing strategy along the way.

Second, Leslie was great to work with on the marketing plan and ad placement. I appreciate that we could strategize together and select the appropriate “target markets” for my property, in addition to the general on-line exposure. Leslie was creative, did a great job following up with contacts and getting us options and pricing, and keeping things on schedule with the advertisers.  At the same time, I felt that I had input into the marketing plan and could use my dollars where they would have the greatest impact. In the end, the marketing strategy brought us the buyer, and was much more effective than the passive listing process.

Just as important, I appreciate your guidance as the broker and manager of the “auction by owner” process. Your overall strategy worked great. It proved very effective to implement the process according to your recommended timeline and steps. It was great to have your practical “tip sheets” and guidance during the property inspection process and auction event.  Of course, once we had the interested parties identified, your advice was invaluable.  I appreciate the way you managed the process to be welcoming to other agents, yet made it sensible and comfortable to the individual buyer. The way you helped us all through the negotiating and contracting process was exceptional.  In the end, we had a quick, uncomplicated sale with price and terms that worked out well for all of us!

Compared to the typical listing process I had attempted with the property over the past 16 months, the Auction by Owner model was a Godsend. The overall cost was a bargain and implementation time took less than four months.  The property was marketed and sold quickly with minimal disruption to the tenants, and the price clearly reflected the best available in the current market.  I would recommend this model to anyone. It allowed me to quickly ascertain the current true market value of the property, kept me in control of the process, and created a quick sale at acceptable terms. Could not ask for more! Please feel free to share my name and experience with your future clients.

Best,

Jim Becker
Steamboat Springs, Colorado
May 15, 2011

Franklin Modern Lofts, Denver Colorado 5-Day Sale Auction Retrospective:

As the homebuilder that retained www.AuctionByBuilder.com to run an auction in April of 2009 on four (4) of my then new, Franklin Modern Lofts, located in downtown Denver.  I wanted to provide this case study retrospective regarding my thoughts of Kyle Cascioli’s innovative, online, real estate auctioning platform.

At the time that we decided to pursue this innovative real estate sales approach, the country had recently experienced the infamous financial markets collapse in October of 2008.  New home and real estate sales transactions had slowed dramatically, mortgage underwriting had become extremely conservative, and the traditional, passive listing approach was not producing much in the way of sales activity. 

Kyle’s new, online real estate auctioning business model, based on Bill Effros’ 5 Day Sale methodology, seemed intriguing.  I arranged for Kyle to meet with me and my construction loan lender to explain his new online real estate auctioning business model.  After the meeting, my banker and I agreed that it would be an approach worth taking a chance on, and decided to pursue the auction with Kyle.

The effort to market the 5 Day Sale style auction was considerable, took a lot of effort, but resulted in more interest and onsite activity than we had in entirety for the prior six months post-October 2008.

ABB marketed the units for nearly 3 weeks and had over 20 pre-registrations, 4 pre-auction sealed bid entries, and over 70 groups came through the project during the two day inspection period.  By Sunday night, March 8, 2009 there were 15 bidders for the four (4) units.  There were final and best bids generated for all of the units. 

I was impressed with the 5 Day Sale auction undertaking, as it generated great market interest and exposure for the project, created buyer activity where none existed before, produced excellent direct market, unfiltered feedback on the project's attributes and limitations.

On two of the one bedroom units we achieved roughly 83% and 85% of our, even though all but one of the bidders were represented by an outside broker and I could save money on outside commissions, I just felt that the units were worth more.

In retrospect, it appears to me now that Kyle’s platform had performed, it generated a sufficient number of buyers to suggest that the offers were reflective of the project’s then “true market value,” and that I should have put the units under contract with those “Best-Bidders.”

Mike Zapf
Franklin Modern Lofts Developer
November, 2010

The Flemmings sold their Bonnie Brae home in one weekend!

"We had our Bonnie Brae property listed for 4 months with no offers and decided to try AuctionByBuilder.com. We sold our home directly to an all cash buyer and closed in 31 days from the date of our auction!" -Will Flemming

Rob Welch of Park Hill

"We achieved a higher "net" exit price for our property at auction than we did listing it!" -Rob Welch

"It really works!" -Kevin Bradley