Results of the dueling Ocean City auctions
It's not every day that condos in the same complex are sold off at two simultaneous auctions, so some of you naturally wondered what came of the dueling events for the Bahia Vista condos in Ocean City.
All sold, the auctioneers report. Eleven of the new condos went on the block at the Grand Hotel in Ocean City, handled by Marshall Auctions, and nine others were auctioned off at the Loews Annapolis Hotel by Max Spann Real Estate & Auction Co.
Max Spann reports that its units went for $396,000 to $561,000. Marshall says its units went for $315,000 to $445,000 -- noting, in a bit of after-auction ribbing, that its buyers paid no premium on top of that. (As is typical at auctions, Max Spann added a 10 percent "buyer's premium" to the sales price.)
Why two auctions? Because the partnership that developed the condos split up. One of the partners went with Marshall. The rest, with Max Spann.
"That has never come up in our four generations of auctioning," Max Spann Jr. said when I asked if he'd ever seen anything like it. "I was actually out at a winter symposium for the National Auctioneers Association, lecturing, and no one had ever heard of it. So it's a new one on me."
Spiro Buas, who signed on with Marshall Auctions, said he decided it was the way to go after he saw another Ocean City property auctioned off. He suspects his ex-partners got the same idea at the same time, since they were there, too. They went that route without discussing it with him, he said.
"I said, 'Well, that's my opportunity. They've got their date set, they've got their time set, they've got their venue set. The fairest thing for me to do is have an auction at the same day, same time,'" Buas said. "I think I produced ... super terms for the buyers to try to persuade them to come to my auction."
Buas, the original landowner, said what he got wasn't what he expected in 2005, when construction began and the market was hot hot hot. But he didn't want to drag things out any longer. The first sale in the 60-condo complex closed four years ago. Before the market tanked, he had thought he'd be done and on to new things by the end of 2006.
"I think the auction reflected on the market," Buas said. "I think they were fair-market prices."
Spann said the simultaneous auctions held back on his attendance. But because his buyers could bid online, "we did have more activity than usual on our Internet," he said. "Also, a lot of people had somebody at each auction -- a husband at one, a wife at the other."
Did it matter, in the end, that the auctions went off at the same time?
"The Ocean City market is deep enough that even when something like that happens, there were plenty of buyers," Spann said. "All I'm going to say about that is I'm glad that's over with."
He knows the other side is saying its buyers got a better deal. He declined to join in with some nanny-nanny-boo-booing of his own.
"It's not the way to do things," he said.
Anyone go? What did you think?
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