Many Lake Martin Voice readers may be interested in the results of the auction of the home at 1355 Sturdivant Rd Jacksons Gap, AL 36861. It is a waterfront home.  According to the auctioneer’s website, the home has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and was built in 1982.

The waterfront home was auctioned off, along with a bunch of other homes (not necessarily in the Lake Martin area), on 9-08-08 in Birmingham.  I didn’t go, but intrepid reporter on the scene, slownez, of Lake Martin forum fame, did.

Here is slow’s report, I thought that it makes for an interesting read of how these multi home auctions go:

“AL State House & Land Foreclosure Auction. Birmingham, AL 9/8/2008.

Registration started at 5pm at the Sheraton downtown. There were about 100 people there right at 5pm to sign in. Some had pre-registered and they had lines to register as well as to identify yourself as someone who would be bidding on multiple purchases. They checked to make sure you had a cashiers check for $5k and a valid ID and then given a bidders card to hold up at the auction. We went to grab a bite to eat and came back a few minutes after 6pm to find ~500 people already seated for the auction and they were scrambling to bring in more chairs.

The bidding started at 6:30pm with a practice session for those that had never attended. There 90 properties to be sold and the Lake Martin house was #88. I took them 3 hours to reach #88. Most all of the properties had a listed starting bid of $1,000. The house value was listed at what ever the last person paid for it, note this is a lot different from what the house is actually appraised for or worth. The $1k houses took off at $5k bidding and went up. Most of those sold in the $30k to $100k price range. The auctioneer had several helpers in the aisles that you could call over to ask what the current price was and what the next bid price was, the auctioneer was hard to understand at times as he was going so fast. Once you won a bid and the property was declared sold, you were escorted to table to finish the paper work and provide or apply for financing.

You were supposed to be pre-qualified for the auction, however they had both Chase and Countrywide on hand. A lot of properties came back up for bid a 2nd time because the winning bidder failed to qualify for a loan and had no proof of cash reserves to pay for the house. This slowed the whole process down as they re-bid these properties before moving to new ones.

The lake martin house was listed for a starting bid of $159k and a value of $416k. Bidding started at $165k and quickly hit $225k among several bidders. Then it was down to two bidders who drove the price up to the winning bid of $285k in about 20 seconds. Add on the 5% for the auction company and the selling price was ~$300k.

—Slownez”

Thanks Mr. EZ!!

Readers – was anyone else at the auction, and do you have more to add? If so please leave a comment below.  Or maybe you weren’t there, but have an opinion on the price or process.  Leave a comment below!

Or, do you have more Lake Martin newsworthy events?  Contact John Coley by phone or email at the top of this page.  We are always on the hunt for great story ideas.

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