New auction service features top golf community properties

: May 22, 2009

Nature abhors a vacuum, and a new service in the Carolina mountains is counting on sellers of high-end properties abhorring one as well. At the lush and expensive Cliffs Communities in the mountains of North and South Carolina, resale homes are in direct competition with developer Jim Anthony's unsold properties. The Cliffs has one of the most effective marketing machines in the business, and it is sometimes difficult for private sales to get noticed.

Enter UpstateBuyers.com, a unique auction service that will hold its first live auction on June 6 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Greenville, SC. Golf community properties at a few of The Cliffs Communities in South Carolina will be first on the block. A second auction of golf course homes and lots in western North Carolina is slated for July 18 and will feature mostly properties at The Cliffs at Walnut Cove, near Asheville, which features a Jack Nicklaus Signature course. Bidders can participate in person or online. (continued below)

Some private owner properties at The Cliffs Valley community near Greenville, SC, will be auctioned off on June 6. The Valley Course, designed by former golf commentator Ben Wright, has a rather straightforward layout and is surrounded by mountains, many the sites of Cliffs properties.

Jon Ball, who started the venture, told Golf Community Reviews that UpstateBuyers will charge sellers a flat $1,000 fee to market their properties but will not assess the customary 10% buyer's premium. The fledgling firm is counting on matching pressured owners with buyers looking for bargains. The auction will be of the "reserve" type, with the property owners retaining the option to reject the highest bids. Therefore, according to Ball, the biggest bargains are likely to be among those properties held by banks anxious to eliminate depreciating assets from their books. Overall, though, the top bids should provide some sense of the true current market for homes at The Cliffs and other high-end properties in the area.
UpstateBuyers does not auction homes for sale by owner, only those currently listed by local real

Bidding for a double lot comprising four acres will open at just $25,000. Others will start well into six figures.

estate agents who provide the auction service with a percentage of the final auction price (assuming the seller accepts the bid). The properties currently listed at UpstateBuyers.com for the June 6 auction include home sites and built homes, with opening bids of $25,000 for a lot in Cliffs Valley to $1.3 million for a home in The Cliffs at Mountain Park. The property whose bidding starts at $25,000 is actually two attached lots of four acres total but offers only a "family" club membership priced at $50,000 (and dues of $350 per month). The Cliffs family membership offers limited access to The Cliffs golf courses. The property is currently listed at $89,000, so expect the top bid to be somewhere south of that.
Another home site at Cliffs Valley, on the 16th hole of the Ben Wright golf course, carries an opening bid of $200,000 but includes full golf membership currently priced at $150,000. (Cliffs members have playing privileges at all six current courses, with a seventh course by Gary Player set to open within the year.) Tiger Woods' first American design at The Cliffs at High Carolina will follow in a couple of years.
Online bidding at UpstateBuyers.com begins June 1 and proceeds until the hammer falls on each property on June 6. If you are interested in more information or want to inspect any of the properties to be auctioned, contact me and I will arrange for you to work with a qualified local "buyer's" agent who knows The Cliffs properties. I am familiar with most of the golf communities in the Carolina mountains area and can help you put together a nice itinerary of visits. I will also negotiate the best possible deals for overnight stays and golf at the communities.