The Auction!!! - Part 11

AJ Dellamano
Sep 13, 2024
7 min read

September 13, 2024

I believe is was about 6 months after my lifestyle and diet changes, Nick came off of 2nd shift and went to first. It was hard for him because he now had to get up at 4 am but at least he was around. My tiny two bed, 1 bath, brick cottage soon became too tiny for all of us.

And although we weren’t really looking, I kept seeing a sponsored add pop up on FB. It was a local auction company. And the house was so cool. Totally my style. Mid century. Low roof line. High windows. All brick ranch. 2 car garage. And more. But the pictures were only for exterior. I kept seeing it. And finally I caved and clicked on the ad on a random Tuesday. Eh. Dang sponsored ads.

The house was just across town. The house was up for auction and it’s contents. There was an open house that Saturday. In my head, I never thought I would even consider a house at auction. Never. But this one piqued my interest. I snapped a screen shot of the FB ad and sent it to Nick.

“I know it’s an auction house but there’s an open house Saturday. Wanna check it out for shits and giggles?”

And he actually said “yes!”

It was early Feb of 2020. We had both kids that weekend. Joe was 5. We knew it wasn’t gonna be fun with both kids, especially the crazy Joe, but we went anyway.

It was frigid that day. Cold, cloudy, windy. Gross.

We walked into the house to find it full of glassware and collectibles. And a lot of people. It was overwhelming. The carpet was off white with pink roses. There was wallpaper here and there. And there was carpet through the ENTIRE house. Except ones small space in the basement.

As we walked through, we watched the kids like a hawk. Hands in pockets, children!!!!!! There was glass everywhere. As we wandered, we separated a bit from one another. It was easy to just kinda get lost. It was almost overwhelming…. Once I made it to the basement, it just seemed to keep going. There was cabinets and storage EVERYWHERE!!!

Along with the carpet. Not even joking. Both baths, kitchen, dining, laundry… I wanted to whisper “I see carpet…. It’s everywhere.”

As we went through the basement, I think I found Nick there in back where there wasn’t carpet and a drop ceiling. We both looked up at the rafters and noted to each other how spotless the place was.

As we made our way back upstairs and out to the garage, we found a garage of tools and equipment. It was a lot. Tables just piled with tools and machining materials. The whole place was so packed it was hard to even walk through.

Then as we headed to the door at the back of the garage not quite knowing what was there... it opened up into the SHOP!!!!! It was a legit shop. Heated and cooled too (not in working order though we soon found). Complete with ventilation area and a big sink. For someone who didn’t want a workshop, it would have made a fab bar and pool house!!!!! Sometimes I wonder if that's what we should have just done…. Then I wouldn’t be driving myself crazy trying to develop S & O! LOL

Then we walked out the back door that opened up to this huge backyard. Wooded area to the East. Big flat yard that had a hillside down the back for sledding. And the shop had a partial basement under it. Huh. House has two basements. Weird.

We bared the wind and cold to check out the property and the shed… which was built into the hillside and also had a basement. Huh. House has three basements. Who has three basements?!? Weird.

It’s was cold. We didn’t speak much. We just took our tour and left.

When we got home, we sat on the couch and chatted a bit about the house. We talked about our resources. The stakes. The opportunity. We read through the contract that would be signed if we won the auction. We had to have 10% of what the sale of the house was within 24 hours. The auction was to start that following Friday and end the next one. We had less than two weeks to get our ducks in a row. But was this worth it? We came up with our plan. We had all the people we needed in place. It wasn’t our first rodeo purchasing a house but it was with an auction home.

I had a real estate agent friend who already had a ton of experience in auction homes. I had a loan officer I had dealt with on two homes. I’d already bought 3 houses and sold 2 in my lifetime. Nick was on 2 already. We both knew the house needed tons of work. But we knew mostly what needed to be done. Nicks cousin was a contractor so we had someone to look over the house but only IF we won. There was no getting back into it. And we had 20k sitting in an investment fund waiting for this moment.

We both fairly quickly agreed we were both all in. Pull the damn trigger!!! Go do the do diligence and see if it’s actually feasible!!

Monday I made my calls. Real Estate agent, finance dude, loan officer lady, and the auctioneer. We wanted to know if we could have a real estate agent to represent us. The answer was no. But the man I spoke to with the auction company was super cool and kind and accommodating. I told him about us and our intent. We weren’t investors. We were a family wanting to build a home there. And we wanted that shop!

But without representation, we had to do this all on our own.

All good. We got this.

Now I ain’t a bettin’ girl. And the one thing that had me worried was…. If we won the auction, put our money down, but the loan fell though, we lost that money. Shit.

Like I said, I ain’t a bettin’ girl and Phwewww… that’s a lot of money to put on the line for us. So we knew we had to do our do diligence to get this right to make the final decision of go or no.

We checked and double checked and after really accessing the whole situation and what we were about to embark upon, we said go and never looked back. We made this decision within a couple days.

That Friday, the bidding started. This wasn’t eBay bidding…. If someone bid in the last 10 minutes of the end, it continued 10 min more. So there was a fair chance. We set a number to get to. We would not go above it. When the bidding began, I placed a bid… I think it was around 34k… just so I could put my foot in. If you were front runner and were outbid you got a text notification.

I was outbid within 24 hours of course, but I was still in the game to continue bidding. But I did not. I waited. And watched. I knew most anyone bidding on this home was most likely an investor. I knew about what it was going to take to make the house sellable and profitable. I’d sold and bought enough homes and followed the real estate market enough to kind of have an idea. I knew where we were to stop, would be pretty close to anyone else who would buy it for themselves. Those going in for profit were probably gonna drop out before us. So there was hope. Not much but it was there. But because I ain't a bettin' girl, I really didn’t think there was chance.

The Friday of the end of the auction, I planned dinner early. Watched the bidding like a hawk and saw very little action. Bidding was to be over at 6 pm. Around 4 ish someone bid, and then it sat. But it was super close to our final. At this point, we were upping in 5k increments only. And our original number ended with a 7. So we knew we had to stop 2 k under our original plan.

We finished dinner by 445. Nothing changed but it was soooooo close that I knew we were out. We only had 2 increments of 5k to get to our final number. We had an hour and 15 min and 10k to work with. I knew it was over. I knew there was no way. We were waiting to the end to place our bid. If it went over before our final, there was no bidding for us. So we just waited till it was close to end.

Around 4:45 Nick asked for my phone to look at the bidding and quickly and nonchalantly placed a bid without sayin' a word.

“Did you just put in a bid??” I asked eyes wide thinking wtf did you do?

“Yup, I’m not letting everyone else

have all the fun.”

That would have been our final bid. But then Nick and I agreed that, we could go up a bit more. But only that additional 3k. That’s it. It was far enough off to break this deal.

So 445 pm our bid went in.

Dinner was finished.

Dishes were done.

We sat down on the couch and watched.

5 o clock goes by

515

530

545

555

Nothing. Changed.

We were still winning.

One minute till, Joe and I decided to do a countdown at 10 seconds. Nick had my phone. I couldn’t watch. I was a wreck!