What Happened At The House Auction

Just a quick note that I attended my first auction this morning for a bank owned house. Last sale price (and mortgage) was $225,000. That buyer went into almost immediate default on that mortgage. I believe an earlier bank sale failed to take. The house was knocked down this morning for $92,500.

When the bidding got over $90,000, the auctioneers assistant was very aggressive at trying to get the last bidder to go $97,500. I mean, he got right in the guy's face, sing-songing the next bid. When he declined, the auctioneer backtracked, and it turned out the last bid wasn't the $95,000 that they had gone to, but the $90,000 this guy had bid. They started bidding again from $90,000 and sold it for $92,500 to somebody else.

But, what if the guy had gone $97,500? It would have amounted to cheating him out of $7,500 by getting him to bid against himself. I didn't bid on the house at this auction, but I'll have to remember if I ever do, if anybody gets in my face I'm going to be proactive about telling them to get lost.