Foreclosure Auntions Drawing Attention

March 10th, 2008

There are many hunting for a house – Warren and his wife have eight children and want more space to move into, Abbruzzetti wants a unit for his son while the Amayas are expectant parents and are eyeing a five bed roomed extravaganza. At the Washington Convention Center on Sunday 9th March 200 houses stood in the auction blocks. Auctioneer Mark Buleziuk rattled off prices while other scrambled to do the bidding for all kinds of properties – townhouses, bungalows, condos and mansions in Maryland and Virginia. All the units had been foreclosed and now the banks were trying to make up for the losses by auctioning them.

There are many who are aware of this chance to make a bargain as the auction continues for two days. The first call was on a house valued previously at $435,000 but now starting with a bid of $139,000. It rose to $315,000 and went to Abbruzzetti. But the latter’s satisfaction soon turned to irritation when he came to know that his offer did not meet the secret reserve price of the bank. The bank has 15 days time to make up its mind whether to accept the offer or not. Abbruzzetti thinks it is a joke!

Others in the fray were two investors, Segears and Palmer who bought, repaired and sold houses. They had focused on five units but could come up with the winning bid for only one. It was valued at $398,000. The lowest bid of $149,000 rose to $275,000. The duo had done a lot of calculations and were confident that if carefully handled money could be made out of these foreclosed houses. The key factor was to be level headed.

Warren, his wife with their brood of eight children had targeted 12 units on the list. They had to keep an eye on the kids as the bidding raged on.

Amaya’s focus was on a chic brick house in Bowie with a spacious garage that can accommodate two cars. With one child and another on the way they want more room and space as they hunted through catalogues. Their house of choice was valued at $780,00 and started off with a bid of $289,000. But many others were eyeing it and there was stiff bidding. It rose to well above the affordability of the Amayas.

The auctions drew mixed reaction from the onlookers as some were sad at the goings on.