At RealtyBid.com, we saw our traffic increase during the first half of 2008 by an incredible 380 percent compared to the same time period in 2007. Also during the first half of 2008, RealtyBid.com saw its number of new registered bidders rise by 50.4 percent over the same time period last year.

But perhaps most impressive is the fact that RealtyBid.com saw a more than 12.4 percent increase in sales during the first half of 2008 compared to the first half of 2007. To see that kind of increase during the first half of this year when our country saw declines in existing home sales every single month is very encouraging for our company.

Certainly, as the number of foreclosures has increased nationwide, the number of bank-owned properties available to buyers via RealtyBid.com has also increased. What RealtyBid.com is able to do successfully—and has been able to do with growing success since 2001—is bring motivated sellers, such as banks and other lending institutions, and buyers together through online real estate auctions.

We continue to work to communicate that it is an excellent time to buy real estate. This is especially true for those who understand the discount and investment potential of RealtyBid.com. It’s exciting for us to see our site traffic, inventory and sales grow each month, but we are even more excited because we realize more and more buyers are “discovering” RealtyBid.com and realizing that online home auctions are a perfect fit for the current buyer’s market.

Seeing new websites that charge to deliver foreclosure home information to their customers come online by the handfuls only reinforces the very aspects of RealtyBid.com of which I have always been proud.

First, we have been auctioning REO and other discounted homes on the Internet since 2001. We have sold thousands of homes at huge discounts to investors and savvy home buyers around the country. Our bidders and sellers know we are credible.

Second, at RealtyBid.com, online access to properties and bidding are always free. Always. If you visit RealtyBid.com right now, you can see every single property we have up for auction. You don’t have to pay to register, you don’t have to pay a monthly membership fee, and we’re not going to give you just a few morsels of a property’s information until you pay. Our site prides itself on its transparency, which benefits both our buyers and sellers.

Our goals are simple— to help bidders save money on foreclosures and other discounted properties and to help our sellers move their properties. And we do it all through online real estate auctions.

Back in May, I addressed how a growing number of people are seeking real estate bargains—phenomenal home deals—through RealtyBid.com. Many visitors are drawn to the hundreds of bank-owned foreclosure properties that populate our site. Both April and May have been record months for RealtyBid.com in terms of unique visits to the online real estate auction site, but right now June is on track to obliterate our latest record from May. Projections for this month show that our unique visits should increase almost 46 percent last month’s record number and should increase more than 650 percent over June 2007—just a year ago!

I will keep you posted regarding the interest in RealtyBid.com by investors, home buyers, and agents over the coming months.

Within the same real estate article mentioned above, one real estate agent said, “Real estate hasn’t stopped; it continues…You have to be careful and informed to make intelligent decisions in this market. Today’s market rewards informed decisions.”

These words have been the mantra of RealtyBid.com. We offer foreclosures and other home bargains via our unique online home auction system and encourage all bidders and buyers to conduct due diligence before entering the bidding process. This combination of embracing the latest technology of online home auctions while using good old fashioned common sense has paid off handsomely for thousands home buyers who have found real estate bargains through RealtyBid.com.

Along with the increase in foreclosures has come and interest in purchasing foreclosure homes. We at RealtyBid.com are seeing a growing number of people looking for real estate bargains, such as the bank-owned foreclosure properties that populate much of our website, through online home auctions. In April, RealtyBid.com saw its greatest number of unique visitors to the site ever, more than 630,000, and May is on pace to top that. To put that number into perspective, in April of 2007, RealtyBid.com’s total number of unique visitors was just more than 122,000. That’s an increase of more than 413 percent in just one year.

Certainly, this is a positive for our company and the online real estate auction industry, but we are also hopeful that the transition of these homes from bank ownership to private ownership is also a positive for real estate buyers, for the buyer agents that we work with every day, for the communities in which these homes are located, and for the neighbors who live around them.

…RealtyBid.com, an online real estate auction site launched in 2001, reported a record year last year, with the number of properties up for auction at the site rising 165 percent compared to 2006 and the total value of properties reaching $542 million.

The site had an inventory of 2,602 auction properties in November 2007, and the property inventory topped 1,000 during six other months last year.

Tony Isbell, RealtyBid.com president and CEO, said that Internet real estate auctions offer a less frenzied approach to the auction process than ballroom auctions.

Isbell, who has a background in the live auction industry, said the ballroom-style auctions with fast-talking auctioneers and big crowds can stir up excitement about properties, though Internet auctions “are a little less hype-oriented.”
“Ballroom auctions — I love them, they’re great, and I’ve done plenty of them for many years — are more of a circus-type event. You can get caught up in the emotion of the moment,” he said.

“Then once you purchase a property, you start wondering, ‘Was that really what I wanted to do?’ There is so much pressure in that environment. Our system … allows people to take a little more time. It’s a little more methodical.”

He added, “There is still competition, still excitement, but a little less pressure on the part of the buyer in making that decision.”

RealtyBid this week had about 894 residential properties at the site, as well as 38 condo properties and nine land parcels.

About 90 percent of the properties displayed at the site are bank-owned or foreclosure properties. Financial institutions and servicers for banks, real estate agents and builders supply properties for the site’s auctions, Isbell said.

“The foreclosure side has been our bread and butter for three years, and it will be for the next four or five years,” he said.
He said it’s short-sighted to think that the housing market will rebound in the next two years. “I think it’s going to be deeper and more painful than most people are predicting,” he said of the downturn, adding that it could last three to five years.

A more varied mix of properties are coming to auction these days, Isbell said, with builders seeking to auction off properties with values in excess of $500,000 and $600,000.

Even foreclosure properties are hitting the site with values above $400,000, he said, adding that it was more common to see foreclosure properties in the $100,000 range in the early stages of the real estate market’s downturn.

The auctions last for 14 days at RealtyBid, and in some cases the bidding period is extended if bidding does not reach an undisclosed minimum sale price, called a reserve price.

Isbell said he has seen more real estate agent involvement with the site’s auction properties. In 2007, real estate agents added about 150 properties for auction at the site, and already this year agents have posted more than 1,000 properties at the site.

Isbell said the auctions are designed to provide transparency in the bidding process, as bidders are identified and sellers can state whether or not they accept contingencies in the sale.

Sellers agree not to influence the bid in any way — eBay also has policies to discourage sellers from influencing the bid process. Some live auction companies do allow properties to be automatically bid up by the auction company to a specified amount on behalf of the sellers — a practice some refer to as “phantom” bidding.

“We don’t allow shills or phantom bids in any form or fashion on our Web site. It’s not something we believe in,” Isbell said.

RealtyBid had about 150,000 unique visitors per month last year, and that number is now closer to 600,000.

“There is a lot of interest in foreclosures right now. Everybody’s looking for a deal and obviously a lot of them are out there right now,” he said.

RealtyBid is working to sell some properties for builder Lennar Corp., and is currently selling Lennar properties in the Phoenix area.

Isbell said he expects to see a surge in condo units at the site, as developers in some major condo markets are still completing projects that were approved during the real estate boom.

“In the Miami area there are going to be more condos that get certificates of occupancy this year than in the past 10 years,” he said. “I think you’re going to see a massive amount of foreclosures in those particular types of units. By the end of this year we’ll be selling a lot of these kinds of units…”

After the conference was over, Mike talked with the conference organizer. He had truly enjoyed hearing Mike’s insights about the current state of the real estate industry and the unbelievable opportunities RealtyBid.com’s online real estate auctions can provide for real estate investors and traditional home buyers.

But, the conference organizer, like Mike, was disappointed with the attendance at this annual conference. He said that over the past few years, attendance had been great because the real estate market had been so strong. But, now that the market has slowed and real estate prices are dropping, he says he had a hard time getting investors interested.
It struck both Mike and me as ironic that at a time when we are fully entrenched in a buyer’s market the likes of which we haven’t seen in years, potential buyers—even those that have experience in the market—don’t understand the unlimited buying opportunities available to them.

Part of what we at RealtyBid.com work to communicate is this—that it’s a wonderful time to buy, and it’s a great time for buyer agents. This is especially true for those who “get” the investment potential of online home auctions on RealtyBid.com. It’s exciting for us to see our inventory and sales grow each month. But, we are even more excited because we realize more and more buyers are “discovering” RealtyBid.com and realizing that online home auctions are a “perfect fit” the current buyer’s market.

We are often asked why we don’t consider offering FSBO properties, and really, the reasons are simple. We know we provide an innovative, efficient and highly effective way for bidders to bid or “place offers” on properties; we are third party that brings buyers and sellers together; but we CANNOT take the place of a real estate agent. We believe agents bring value to the entire RealtyBid.com process. Knowing that an agent is affiliated with every property on our site instills confidence in potential bidders. Having an agent affiliated with a RealtyBid.com property gives bidders a point person to answer important questions and provides them with a knowledgeable guide when viewing and inspecting the property.
The credibility that partnering with agents brings to RealtyBid.com is vital to our success.

MSNBC.com reported, “Median home prices were also down and many analysts predicted further price declines in the months ahead given high levels of unsold homes…Sales of single-family homes and condominiums dropped by 0.4 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.89 million units. That was the slowest sales pace going back to 1999 and was seen as evidence that the steepest slump in housing in a quarter-century has yet to hit bottom.”

This is certainly not news to anyone associated with the real estate industry. Real estate agents are living this scenario everyday. However, at RealtyBid.com, we are seeing signs of hope. Buyers ARE looking to buy, but they are looking to buy at the right price. We have more and more agents looking to RealtyBid.com to move properties for motivated sellers every day.

And, we KNOW that an increasing number of potential buyers are looking to land a great bargain on their next property purchase. We know this because the traffic to RealtyBid.com continues to grow unbelievably each month. For example, this month (February 2008), the number of unique visits to RealtyBid.com increased 30 percent over just last month. Even more telling is the fact that these February 2008 unique visit numbers are a more than 373 percent increase over traffic numbers for February 2007—just one year ago.

JR is the mastermind behind much of the inner workings of the RealtyBid.com system and has been at the helm of our technology department since 2001, but that’s not how I know he believes in our product. I know because he has just completed his second transaction on RealtyBid.com.

About two years ago, JR sold a home via RealtyBid.com. The property sold quickly, and the transaction went smoothly. All parties were pleased. Now, just this week, JR has purchased a home via RealtyBid.com, and he got a real bargain! Seeing is believing, and JR has seen the success of RealtyBid.com online home auctions.

New Homes, Resales, Foreclosures—We’ve Got Them All!

JR’s story drives home the fact that RealtyBid.com has grown to offer all kinds of homes to meet the desires of many different people. The house JR sold on RealtyBid.com was a conventional market resale property; the house he bought was a bank-owned, post-foreclosure property. Add that to the steady stream of new homes from builders we’re featuring, and you’ll see that we’ve got something for everyone!