Creating Urgency and Competition for Buyers - Priceless!

Recently, one of our new customers ran her first online auction to sell one of her properties. It was another good example of how creating urgency and competition, gets buyers to take action.

Being new to the process, she was very diligent in reading all of our training materials and strategies, watching the how-to videos, etc. She also called and e-mailed me several times through the process with other questions and to get my opinion.

Now the property she was selling was minimal at best, it was a 2 bed, 1 bath 860 sq. ft. home with no basement, but it was nicely rehabbed and ready to move in. It was a good property for a landlord because it could be rented and would cash-flow.

The auction was open for online bidding for 20 days. It was listed in the MLS with bidding information, signs in the yard and 2 open house previews. She followed the process as suggested.

With 4 days left she had two interested buyers and they were taking turns being the high bidder. On the last day a 3rd buyer jumped in and got involved in the bidding.

Due to all the competition, one of the 3 buyers told her they were placing a bid for full price as listed in the MLS and sending a contract.

Rather than end the auction early and accept the full price offer, she decided to let it run it's course. The auction never did reach the full MLS listing price (close - a few thousand less), but that buyer who really wanted it still wrote their offer at full price. She was thrilled and surprised because she wasn't expecting to get her MLS listing price.

To me, it's just another example of how the online auction process can create competition and urgency for buyers. This results in "demand" which is always a good thing for a seller.