www.Gotham-RealEstate.com -New York City Real Estate Blog

Prices to start at 70% off previous market levels.

Not the nicest properties, but great bargains for the handy.....

Mass real estate auctions are coming to New York City.  This Sunday at the Jatvits Center USAuction.com expects 3,000 people to show up looking for a bargain.  A sad comment on the New York City housing market, but between this and condo auctions that were announced in Feb, hopefully we will start to see a floor in real estate prices beginning to form.  Not too dissimilar to stock market technicals, the housing market needs to form a support line before prices can firm, and eventually beginning to rise again. Tough medicine to swallow, but necessary to clear inventory.

 

Amanda Fung

Crains New York

Next Sunday, 232 foreclosed homes in the New York will be sold to the highest bidder at a big auction set for Manhattan’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. This is the second time USHomeAuction.com, a Irvine, Calif.-based real estate auction firm, is holding an event in New York City. Its first sale took place last year, when the city was just starting to feel the fallout from the subprime crisis that has crippled Florida and other parts of the nation.

“In the past, there weren’t enough foreclosed New York homes to hold an auction,” said Rick Weinberg, a spokesperson for USHomeAuction.com. “This year I suspect that there will be a second and third auction in the city.”

In January, New York City foreclosures soared 64% from December and were up 5% from January 2008, according to real estate site PropertyShark.com. There were 278 foreclosures in the city. Single and two-family homes in the Queens neighborhoods of Jamaica, South Jamaica, Hollis and St. Albans recorded the most foreclosure filings. February foreclosure numbers are expected later this week.

USHomeAuction.com works with banks and lenders and stages sales events whenever there is a critical mass of inventory in each market. Last year, the firm auctioned 83 New York homes for a total of $16 million. Last year was also a record year for 18-year-old USHomeAuction.com, which nationwide auctioned off 32,799 homes for a total of $3.4 billion. The majority of the homes were in hard-hit California, Florida and Arizona.

The auction firm expects more than 3,000 attendees on March 8 at the Javits Center. Starting bids for houses are discounted by a minimum of 70% from their previously valued price. For instance, one 2,500-square-foot house in Jamaica valued at $555,000 has a starting bid of $69,000, according to USHomeAuction.com.

“They’re not the nicest properties, but people can get a great bargain, especially if you’re handy,” said Mr. Weinberg.

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