Sharing my experience with auction.com

[Raji Kaur]

Hey Guys - I'm a newbie and decided to try auction.com. Thought I'd share my experience. I bid on a few properties and ended up with the highest bid on a 3/1 SFH in a suburb of Chicago. I am not sure if there was shill bidding involved or not, but towards the end of the auction there were a couple of bids placed. But even in Ebay auctions that happens. And I myself was watching and bidding last minute so I'll never know. My "offer" was submitted to the seller and they get upto 15 days to respond. They accepted about 10 days later and to make a long story short, I closed on the house last week and it went very smooth. There were no liens on the house and the bank even credited me for unpaid 2013 taxes and 2014 taxes upto this month which was a bonus to me. Some things I learned, mostly through my incompetence and inexperience :-)

-This house WAS on the MLS and most of the auction.com homes are listed. Although they advertise "bid before its listed on MLS" - I checked the address online and saw old listings and assumed it wasn't currenly listed. So I looked at the house from outside but didn't go inside. I could have previewed the inside had I paid more attention.

-Auction.com usually always has a reserved price. But I was called on an auction I lost and offered to buy the house at my last bid because the winning bidder didn't go through. Who knows if that part was true.

- 5% of the total purchase price or $2,500 (whichever is greater) is required when you buy the house, its a fee for auction.com basically. And this DOES NOT go towards the final purchase. That was my misunderstanding.

-Unfortunately, the final sales price shown Includes the deposit/fee that they take upfront. Which mispresents the market value and affects comps, but thats just how they do it and are allowed to do this.

-They do post purchase agreement docs, addendums, and any other related documents on the auction page, at the bottom of each listing.

-All the signing is done online and their customer service was easy to deal with and helped me along the process.

Overall - I'm satisfied. I got the keys from the lsiting agent the day after closing and already found a contractor to fix up the place. I would consider it again as another way of finding a deal.