Time For Another Auction

For the last two months we have been working on another auction.  Between the two stores we had a good dozen units going into auction status.  16 days ago when we sent the ad into the paper we only had 6 left.  That is not bad. Six units that paid up, or paid and moved. Paid and Moved is when a customer Knows they are never going to pay off their bill, so they offer 51% and get their stuff off the property.  The average that I try to achieve is 33 cents on the dollar so if I can get a bad unit emptied and still make 50 cents on the dollar I call that good. 

All good things do have to come to an end .  When we reach the cut lock day if the customer has not taken care of their debt then it goes to all or nothing. We had 6 units that had reached that point. 
One week out Linda got one of her units to pay up. That’s nice 5 units a good number for an auction. Then another unit pays up and I start thinking if Linda keeps this up we may lose this auction….. Let’s think about this…..  Linda gets people to pay up at full price, which is better than a pay and move and a lot better than 33 cents on the dollar at auction.

So we ride for a while with four units, not a great number for an auction, but livable.  Then it happened, the two units that were going to auction at my property both were paid off the night before the auction.  $1000.00 in the bank and we don’t have to take the risk of going to auction.  I could really get use to this.  But… this leaves only two units left.

Tuesday morning I get up and go have breakfast with the men’s group at church. When I get back home the phone starts to ring. People want to know what is left for today.  Two units we tell them, and then the call happens.  One more unit is coming in to pay up.  With 50 minutes to go one of our tenants comes in under the wire. We are down to one. At this point I am rooting for our last tenant to magically appear and pay off… it did not happen.

10:00 comes and we have 6 bidders and one unit. Oh yes!  the whistler came back and actually behaved himself.  It looked like this from my point of view.

 

And it looked like this from their point of view.

 

The end story is that the one and only unit that went up for sale today brought in $190.00 and the whistler did not stay in the bid for very long.

 

In one way it was a very lonely bid sheet. On the other hand we made bank through this auction process and the on unit  went for 55 cents on the dollar. Not bad all the way around.