I’m Elliott Kyle, we’re with Skyline Seven Real Estate in Atlanta, Georgia, and I’m on the investment sales team.
In my experience, using Ten-X probably 20-plus times so far, the one thing that I really appreciate is the certainty of closing. I know that if we come to an agreement and we do it, there’s a very high, high, high probability the deal is going to close.
What’s really beneficial, in my opinion, is when CoStar & LoopNet got involved. I guess there was a merger, purchase, or whatnot. It’s refreshing now because there are professional photos taken, there are drone videos. It makes my life a lot easier. Another benefit is the third parties. the property inspections done ahead of time. The Phase I’s done ahead of time. Title work’s done. So you don’t have those questions saying, “How’s the roof? How’s this? How’s that?” It’s, “Hey, the report’s done. It’s right there. We’re not hiding anything. It’s all right there. We’re showing our cards to you.”
We had one onetime, it’s interesting, I think we had 33 bids once a reserve got met. We dropped the bid increment down to ten thousand and it was like punch, counter punch, punch, counter punch, and we’re like, “How long is this going to take?” Yes, I think we might have set a record for the auction. It’s like, “This is going on for hours.” And it worked out well! The guy got well above what he was expecting.
Our main contact at Ten-X is Korey Prefontaine. He’s local, he comes by the office, he’s very good at following up. What used to be, we would have properties and maybe had some issues with them, it’s like, “Oh, it’s great Ten-X platform, we could do it.” It’s really now stabilized properties we’re selling. The last two that we sold on Ten-X were single-story office buildings. We’re coming out of COVID, which has been pretty tough. That’s not what people are saying, “Hey, I want a single-story office in Suburbia,” but we were successful in both of those. Korey did a really good job interfacing in the weekly calls. The seller is always up to date, they’re able to ask questions. We have Zoom calls, things like that.
They have their own dashboard, the owner does, so he has visibility to everything I’m doing. So it makes me liable. You know, I’m like, “I’ve got to be doing my job and following up and making notes and saying I call these people,” and all that. So, it’s really just a big team effort.
We’re with Ten-X, it’s like, you know it’s going to sell. That’s what I like about it. They’re going to set a reserve that’s realistic. The seller has the option to drop the reserve, but they can’t raise a reserve during the auction. So we also see that sometimes, in order to get people to bid, bid, bid, they’ll drop the reserve a little bit, hit the button that says, “Reserve met.” The bidder then says, “I can buy this now, one more click I can buy it, I can buy it.” That “Reserve met” button, it starts flashing, and that’s when the bidding really starts popping.
The process now with Ten-X is very fluid. I think as time goes on, more and more people utilize Ten-X, they’ll see the benefit of it. It’s a really good platform!