Prudential Fox & Roach Form Alliance with Sheldon Good & Company

Alliance instantly pushes both ahead of market trends and gives even single-home sellers a new option
Alliance instantly pushes both ahead of market trends and gives even single-home sellers a new option

RISMEDIA, August 23, 2006?First Auction of 22 Jersey Shore town homes already slated for mid-October, minimum bids for new luxury residences set at just over 55 percent of original asking prices

Second homes at the shore, high-priced Main Line properties, new construction in Center City, and development opportunities are each encountering new challenges finding buyers. As a strong real estate market softens, auction firms have become a knight in shining armor ? even for sellers looking to sell a single-family home.

Prudential Fox & Roach, Realtors?, the nation’s fourth largest provider of home services and the largest real estate firm in the Greater Philadelphia market, today announced a strategic alliance with Sheldon Good & Company Auctions Northeast, LLC (www.sheldongood.com). Sheldon Good & Company International, LLC has been ranked as the nation’s largest real estate auction firm. The alliance enhances the benefits of using Prudential Fox & Roach?s Auction Group for investors and gives individual homes another outlet.

As the real estate market softens, this alliance is particularly well-timed.

?Real estate auctions, now a $51.2 billion industry in the U.S., allow sellers to increase properties? visibility to a national audience and to close sales quickly, often in 75 days or less, and without contingencies,? said Ed Ritti, SIOR, vice president of Prudential Fox & Roach.

Auctions of residential and other types of properties have been growing steadily around the U.S. About $14.2 billion in residential real estate was sold through auctions in 2005, up 8.4 percent over the previous year, according to the National Auctioneers Association (NAA).

?This growth is due in part to the eBay phenomenon as Americans have become more familiar with the auction process,? said Steven L. Good, chairman and CEO of Sheldon Good & Company and former chairman of the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) Real Estate Auction Forum.

The new strategic alliance has already paid dividends. Sheldon Good & Company and Prudential Fox & Roach will conduct an auction, tentatively set for mid-October, of 22 newly-constructed vacation residences, many within walking distance of the beach and boardwalk, in North Wildwood, NJ.

The three and four-bedroom, luxury town-homes and condominiums, ranging in size from 1,600-2,000 square feet, are located at 2401 and 2110 Surf Ave. and 1603 Delaware Ave in North Wildwood. In addition to the 22 residences, the developer, Seabreeze Development LLC in Mt. Laurel, NJ, has decided to auction two residential development sites approved for an additional 10 residences and two stores.

“By setting the minimum bids at just over 55 percent of the original asking prices, the seller is proactively creating a regional market for the upscale residences in a softening marketplace,” said Good.

Seabreeze will offer one-third of the newly-constructed townhomes with a minimum bid of $375,000, significantly below the original asking prices, which ranged up to $650,000.

Auctions provide large and small builders as well as investors and developers with the ability to buy and sell every type of residential product, including single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums, vacation homes and vacant home sites as well as raw land, approved land and demolition projects.

Auctions also provide individual homeowners with another option for marketing individual homes with the same benefits large sellers enjoy. Single-property auctions typically start with homes valued at $1.5 million. Properties at a lower price point would be grouped together with others and included in a multi-property auction.

In the Greater Philadelphia market, Sheldon Good & Company has processed approximately $200 million in New Jersey and Pennsylvania properties, including trophy homes, townhomes, condominiums, vacant land, shopping centers, warehouse and manufacturing facilities as well as office and apartment buildings. This past spring, the company auctioned the Jonathan Fell House, a restored Doylestown home where Gen. George Washington and his troops once slept.

For more than 25 years, Sheldon Good & Company has auctioned thousands of properties up and down the East Coast, from Maine to Florida, and enjoys a near-100 percent closing rate. Sellers can also take advantage of the firm’s innovative $250 million global lending fund which provides cash advances on the sale of owners? real estate and can defer interest and principal payments until owners? properties are sold or refinanced.

The company?s reputation extends far beyond the Philadelphia market, including auctions of islands around the world and properties for celebrities such as Donald Trump and John F. Welch Jr., the former chairman of General Electric.

?We’ve done extensive research on this market and it has tremendous potential,? said Good. Sheldon Good & Company with the Prudential Fox & Roach Auction Group offer the most complete program for our clients in the Tri-State area. We expect this alliance will create many more valuable opportunities in the months and years ahead.?