The following Q&A was completed as part of our conversational Commercial Real Estate FAQ Interview Series, we hope you find it helpful.
While there’s a lot of stigma typically attached with going to auction sites, these digital platforms are the way the future is moving. When buyers simply can’t or aren’t performing, going to an online auction like Tenex can move properties quickly with a pleasant experience. While perhaps not for everyone, it is an option when a commercial real estate property is not moving quickly enough.Â
Richard Wilson: What is the bet way to sell a commercial real estate property very quickly?
Ben Marks: It’s funny you ask that because we’ve had on some, especially tertiary markets, some issues with just buyers not performing. And again, to my previous comment, it was a multi-family asset and there’s been such a girth of folks moving into that asset class. Not only just from other types of real estate, but from all different kinds of industries. And it’s a very timely question because we at one point with one asset in the tertiary market just go so frustrated with having our time wasted by buyers who couldn’t perform we ended up going to an auction. And there’s a lot of stigma attached with going to some of the auction sites, Tenex who we used in this case was we got very very good execution, really impressed with a lot of the folks there. I don’t think it’s for everyone, you know, if you’re selling a multi-family property in the middle of Miami you don’t need them, but if you’re dealing with a more difficult asset to value or tertiary market, or a large asset in a tertiary market, or something that doesn’t sort of fit. And a lot of people kind of joke about it, a lot of folks didn’t know that, and I didn’t know, that Tenex is owned by Google. So when we’re talking about disruptive companies, I got a crash course from the Google folks when we did that transaction about how they broke. And let me tell you, it is just like Tesla is changing the way that cars are built, and driven, and manufactured, I really do believe that companies like Google and Tenex are going to completely disrupt the brokerage industry. It’s already happening.
Richard: Yeah, interesting. I’m sure LukeNet CoStar has their eye on all that stuff going on because they’re the old school gorilla that’s been gobbling up things and acquiring people to become more up to the times with Apartments.com and LukeNet and other things. But I’m sure they’re on each others’ radar so that’s interesting.
Ben: Yes. I agree.
