Captain Pike's Ship Log II

Today I went to a real estate auction. Ever since the broken down house across the street from me sold to some guy for $4000, I've been interested in attending one of these. It was a beautiful sunny morning at 9 a.m. when we walked down to the location of one property that we were definitely interested in. The yard was full of junk, there was an old barn that needs to be torn down, and basically some painting that should be done. But other than that, the place had some appeal. We had a chance to walk through week ago. The furnace is relatively new, and most of the windows have been replaced with modern energy-efficient ones. So we made up our minds to attend this auction, just to make sure that the place didn't sell for peanuts to someone else.

At quarter of 10, the auctioneer showed up. We were kind of excited because it looked like no one else was going to come bid on this property. The dew was still on the grass at one minute till 10 when three pickups and a Volvo wagon showed up on the location. It seemed like everybody knew everyone there except us. "Hi, Tom, how you doing?", "Great Lenny, great, how about that football player of yours?", all very buddy buddy. One guy, I remembered him he was a cop, or something, and did some substitute teaching. Another guy , I recognized, his son's a football star and he recently won the teacher of the year award. Whoppi-do! The only reason I know this is because for the brief couple of weeks where I was an Ed Tech III, Wal-Mart bestowed a huge award upon a teacher in the school I worked at. Supposedly, giving our town $100,000 or something. It was all very impressive at the time, but I found out later, it's all hype -- just a promotional thing for Wal-Mart, the 100,000; just a total savings that our town has received, collectively, since Wal-Mart came and put the small guys out of business.

I had told my wife before we came, "let's just go there and have fun, see how it all works out." So we all tendered our $5,000 to the auctioneer and got a little bid card number thingy. And so the auction began: just like you might think, suddenly this regular guy that we had met, starts talking real fast in this funny accent. There were actually a couple of houses being auctioned. Only one held any interest for us, since the other one was a rental unit that someone we know had lived in and I guess a couple of unspayed cats got loose in there for a while. So the bidding started, 5000, 10,000, the auctioneer kept calling for 20,000, no one said anything. 16,000, 17,000, it went in 19,000, and nobody would go any higher. It was more than we were willing to pay. There was something on the order of $6,000 owed in back taxes and water/sewer. That, in addition to the minimum we figured we'd have to payout to fix the place up well enough to rent or sell, made the 19,000 just a little too rich for us. I secretly was tempted to yell out "19,500." But we agreed on how high we would go, and that was too high. So then, the auctioneer said something like, "well, I'll give the bank a call, see if that is okay...". See if what was okay? I didn't understand this. The auctioneer disappeared into the recesses of the house with his iPod, calling the bank. He emerged in five minutes, walked across the lawn to the place where he had been standing, and said, "I have been authorized by the bank to submit a bid of 30,000". What the hell was this? The fellow who had bid the 19,000 seemed not to be irritated at this. There was some low talking, and this fellow said something about being willing to pay 25,000. I still couldn't believe this was happening. Again, the auctioneer nervously ducked back into the house, brandishing his iPod. Before too long, he was back, pacing across the lawn to his spot, "nope, the bank really wants to to stick with the 30,000". There was a lot of silence, and a lot of gesticulating, the fellow who really, in my mind, had won the bid began pinching his lips, as if to keep any more words from coming out unbeckoned. The auctioneer began shifting his stance, impatiently. He kept repeating some ancient phrase which meant "do I hear anything greater than 30,000?" Finally the guy said he'd give them one more dollar, essentially bidding $30,001. What a sham! I guess they do this all the time, when a bank is the owner. I kept muttering stuff like, "why doesn't the bank come down here and put up their 5000, like everybody else?" But I promised my wife, I wouldn't embarrass her.

Talking to the teacher of the year dude, I guess they do this all the time. The only time it's an auction, like on TV, is when it's a municipal auction, a city just wanting to get what back taxes they could get, and there isn't any mortgage money owed. It was fun, and we got our five grand back. Another time, I'd know what to expect. I guess my father's old adage is still true: "you can't get something for nothing."