5/17/2007

Fremont Lofts Auction Cancelled!!



Breaking news!

Velocity Marketing was supposed to be holding an auction this Sunday May 20th to sell off the remaining units at The Fremont Lofts located at 160 Fremont St in Worcester, MA. I guess Velocity was expecting quite a turnout as the auctions were to be held downtown at the DCU Center.

I sent Velocity Marketing an email earlier in the week to see if the auction was going to be open to the public, or if it was only going to be open to pre qualified bidders. In the email I basically stated that I was interested in attending from a blogging perspective and would not be bidding. I received an email that stated, "The auction is closed to bidders only so that we know everyone in the room is there to bid. Easier for us to manage the process that way." That email was sent to me today by Velocity Marketing at 3:44pm. I then received a second email today at 6:14pm stating that The Fremont Lofts auction has been cancelled because "the response did not meet the critical number required to hold a live auction..."

The Fremont is holding an Alternative Sales Program beginning this Saturday at 11am. We might have to give the phone number a call at the very least or perhaps even pop in and see what kind of pricing and incentives they are offering.

The fact that The Fremont had to cancel the auction due to lack of response is a cause for concern for the Worcester/Central MA/Massachusetts/US housing market as a whole. I figured that now that spring has sprung that the auction would go on and most of the units would sell at the minimum or slightly above. The fact that they could not even get enough people to register to hold the auction is troubling indeed, and not just for The Fremont but for anyone looking to sell their home at the present time.

Once again it all comes down to supply and demand and the amount of homes on the market continues to rise at an alarming rate. In April there were 743,367 existing homes and condos listed for sale in the 18 major metro areas tracked by ZipRealty. That number is 33% higher than April of 2006 and 7.2% higher than March 2007. Inventories in some metro areas have TRIPLED from the height of the housing boom in 2005.

If The Fremont is going to sell units for less than what the opening bids were going to be, or they throw in some nice incentives such as no condo fees for a year or some intrest rate buydowns I think they would make a decent buying opportunity. Right now the buyer has plenty of choice available to them so the sellers need to do something special to make themselves and their properties stand out from the crowd.

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