IRVINE, CA-As the housing market recovers, Auction.com is shifting its business approach, Rick Sharga, EVP of the firm, tells GlobeSt.com. Originally focused on moving the huge volume of distressed assets borne of the Great Recession, Auction.com is now working more with non-distressed assets.
“The company is actually very well positioned as the market shifts,” says Sharga. “We started out as a company selling primarily distressed assets owned by lenders. These were very low-priced and difficult-to-sell assets. Gradually over time, the value and the quality of the assets have increased.”
The firm is “moving in tandem” with the market as prices have improved and the market has gained health, Sharga adds. “We're selling more properties that are less and less distressed.”
Last year, two of the firm's largest transactions involved $70-million and $50-million office properties. “So it shows that the sky's the limit regarding what people will buy and sell online,” says Sharga.
Auction.com is also expanding its outreach to reach audiences that aren't necessarily your traditional distressed buyers and sellers, he adds. “These are small and mid-sized investors who, in many cases, are already buying on our site, and we're working with them to sell their repaired properties as non-distressed assets. We sold a few hundred of these in 2013.”
The way Sharga describes the firm's evolution, “We're working our way up the food chain. We originally sold REO properties, and then we started to sell trustee-sale properties, which we now sell in 15 states, and we sell short-sale properties on the site. In every property category in which we participated, we outperformed the market. We're thinking the model will extend into the traditional non-distressed market as well.”
As GlobeSt.com reported recently, Auction.com has been selected as one of the Top 25 Most Responsive Employers in the country by StartWire, which provides services to more than 2 million job seekers. The firm was the only real estate company to make the list.
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