Over the past calendar year, there has been one condo auction that has taken place in Boston, at Broadluxe in June of 2008, and one just outside Boston, at Longwood Towers in April of 2009.
These condo auctions were brought to market on behalf of institutional investors, those who owned the entire development. Public auction as a selling mechanism has yet to take hold with individual condo owners, but is this a concept that will gain further momentum?
Crowdsourcing, the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an individual employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call, is a concept that has gained significant momentum over the past several years. Especially in the wake of Threadless, a company that allows the general public to design and vote on what t-shirts the company produces and sells (and which, by they way, consistently sell out). Is the concept of letting the consumer decide something that can transcend the housing market, via an auction?
Voice your opinion on whether you think such an auction concept has merit in the Boston condo market.
Would you sell your condo via a public auction?
If you could control the timing and minimum bid how likely would you be to use an online auction service to sell your property?
Keith Munsell 
