Foreclosures and Food

 Meeting up with old architecture schoolmates and colleagues, I realized most of us harbor dreams of being a property developer.  One classmate wants to be a developer so that he can have full control of the architecture and his design would be realized fully as he intended.  Another friend got traumatized by a client who didn't pay so she surmised holding the reins yourself would free you from these pitfalls -- while introducing you to other kinds of pitfalls.   Another person would like to maximize earnings and profit versus getting individual contracts.  Whatever the reasons, there remains the need to acquire knowledge and experience to be able to make quite a lofty dream come true.  So a friend and I attended some seminars on real estate and attempted to join our first property auction.  

However, in the first auction, we weren't even able to set foot inside the function room.  Thus the picture above of the sumptuous lunch at Mesa Greenbelt which was taken after we funnily, laughably failed to enter the auction.  I was excitedly telling my other architect friends about the misadventure before gorging on Mesa's mouth-watering two-way laing and grilled platter.  

Two days before the auction, I was able to visit two properties in the list which we found interesting.  In the first home, a semi-hostile lady told us that she would be calling her lawyer the next day to fix the problem and no, she will not allow her home to be taken away from her.  In the second property, there was a sign outside the gate labelling it under litigation.  The person from the asset management company escorting me to the site wasn't able to get us in either.  Despite these setbacks, my friend and I decided to attend the auction and absorb what we can.  

In one of the seminars, the speaker recommended that we should attend property auctions just to get the feel for the process, an idea about property values and a general exposure to real estate. We weren't able to get in the auction room because if we gave the show-money manager's check and nobody else bid for the property, we would be declared the automatic winners.  We just wanted to see how the thing works and not foolishly commit our money to something we were not fully prepared to buy.  

Another thing is the "as is where is basis" clause that means once sold, the buyer takes the property with all the legal and other impediments on his or her shoulder.  Scary, especially for the inexperienced.  For the brave and natural risk taker who knows what they're doing, it's another story.  You'd have to contact a lawyer beforehand to know about the legal and financial ramifications of buying a foreclosed property with a tangle of unsightly strings attached.  

 The next day, there was another auction that we joined and this time we were able to get in.  At the first auction, my friend prepared a manager's check for P100,000 as show-money while the second auction had a lower show-money amount at P25,000.  The property values in their list were also much lower.  The auction started past 9:30 in the morning yet they strangely served us a full lunch of fried rice, soup, lumpiang shanghai, chicken, two other dishes and buchi.  

People clapped and a few cheered when people won bids.  Most of the prices didn't escalate that much because one person always bowed out to the other while a number of people were lucky solo bidders. During these two auctions, we were able to talk to others who gave useful tips and insight for information-hungry students like us who have a lot of homework to do.