5-day Sale Results

Well, the 5-day sale results were somewhat disappointing. I sure am glad that the whole thing is non-binding!

To talk generic numbers, let's say we hoped/expected to get $100 out of the sale. According to the 5-day formula, the number we put in the add is 50% of that, rounded down to the next "magic number" in the book. In our case that was about $44. We would have been OK with anything above $89.

The written bids (before the round-robin auction started) got up to $59. The highest bidder after the round robin was $71 - less than the liens (1st and 2nd) on the property and less than we paid 6 years ago for the house.

I can think of a few things I would do differently next time:

1) Ads - I would use the words "Will be sold Sunday night to HIGHEST BIDDER" instead of "House will be sold to HIGHEST BIDDER" so people know when it will be sold. There were two versions in the book, and I did not see the other one until later.
2) Neighbors - We never got around to talking to our neighbors about our sale, and I wish we would have. I would have encouraged them to tell people they know about the sale. It would be good for the neighbors (they get to help pick their future neighbor), and gets people out that likely already know the neighborhood.
3) Bidders - I think we could have done a better job with visitors to the house, especially sitting down with them after they had looked at the house, explaining the process again, and encouraging them to bid (even if only a penny).

While I would do it again, I hoped the method was a little more foolproof. We had a lot of calls and emails (probably 50-60), but we only had about 26 famlies/couples come tour, and 14 bids.

We will probably end up listing with a realtor so that we can focus on our "new" house - getting it fixed up and in good shape to live in.

I'm afraid that this is going to discourage a lot of people we know that are very interested in this method from trying it.

We definitely want to try this method on some other things the author recommends: cars and rental properties (for rental, not for sale).