Slowdown in Florida Home Loan Demand Leads to Real Estate Auction

To pump up a slowdown in the Cape Coral housing market, Miloff Aubuchon Realty Group Inc. plans to hold an auction.

And not just any real estate auction - with 120 properties up for bid, it could be the largest held in Cape Coral.

“Any time a multiproperty auction is held of more than 30 properties it is considered a large auction,” said Earl Williams, auction manager with Higgenbotham Auctioneers International Ltd. of Lakeland.

A slowdown in real estate sales triggered the idea for the auction, said Jeff Miloff, the group’s sales director. He hopes this leads to a slew of Florida mortgage loan applications.

“The auction might also be the future of the real estate industry,” Miloff said. “People have gotten used to auctions because of eBay.”

The Aubuchon Miloff sponsored auction for three commercial properties and 66 residential lots begins 11 a.m. Friday. Bids are scheduled to begin for 44 homes 11 a.m. Saturday.

Seven luxury waterfront homes come up for bid at 7 p.m. Saturday.

Although the majority of the properties are in Cape Coral, there are a few in the Fort Myers housing market, along with Lehigh Acres, Estero and Punta Gorda.

“The idea came from Terry Mell in our office. We worked on putting it together with Higgenbotham Auctioneers for five months,” Miloff said. “We are so excited and optimistic that we are having another one in February or March.”

Hardly containing her excitement about the auction, Virginia Ward, 67, said she and her husband David, 69, are having a lot of fun putting their home up for auction in the hope of luring in new Florida home buyers.

They reside in a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath, single-story home on Dolphin Canal in the Yacht Club area.

The home’s fair market value is $862,410, according to the Lee County Property Appraiser Web site Leepa.org.

“We did all our research and we decided to go with the auction partly because Jeff Miloff came out himself to talk to us about it,” Ward said.