MARK WAITE / PVT Auctioneer Guy Deiro outlines the ground rules before starting the auction. Advertisement

Las Vegas auctioneer Guy Deiro prompted a room full of bidders Saturday, "Now to give 160, 150 now to give 160, 150 now to give 160, it's a bargain. I don't know if they're going to sell if for that, but it's a bargain."

Despite prompting the crowd that "you'll never buy it any cheaper than today," the top bid for a 1,825-square-foot, fully-furnished, model home in the Villa Serena subdivision in Mountain Falls was $160,000. The asking price was $238,500.

Nobody was willing to start bidding at $225,000 or even $190,000. Instead a bidder started with a $150,000 offer.

The calling was quick and fast-paced, but in the end Deiro Auctioneers Inc. received bids on only three of five homes in Villagio, a subdivision in Mountain Falls, and on only four of seven homes in Villa Serena.

Robyn Yates, owner and corporate broker for Windermere Prestige Properties in Henderson, said an investor bought the homes from the builder, Celebrate Homes.

"It's just part of the process to liquidate the homes and they weren't selling quickly enough, just having agents here on site, so we decided to go ahead and auction them," she said.

Three homes sold within 10 days of announcing the auction, Yates said.

"It creates a buzz in the community," she said.

The sales weren't confirmed Saturday, but high bidders could hand over a check for $10,000 to Land America with a 30-day close of escrow period. Homes came with a one-year builder warranty, no buyers premium and title insurance already paid.

Deiro even threw in a one-year membership to Mountain Falls Golf Club.

"If you're acting in good faith and you need a little more time because of an appraisal issue or things are not going as fast as we want, it's not my clients intent to take your $10,000. They'd rather sell you the house," Deiro told prospective bidders. "My sellers are real good guys and they understand how the market turns around."

For the first round of bidding on the larger Villagio homes, Deiro asked for a starting bid on the first home of $255,000, only slightly below the last sales price of $258,500 on a 2,216-square-foot home. But he quickly went down to $255,000, then $250,000, $240,000, then dropped to $200,000.

That got things started but bids only went up to $210,000.

The pattern continued. Deiro asked for a starting bid of $270,000 for a 2,466-square-foot home selling for $275,500 but he quickly had to drop down to a $190,000 offer. That only rose to a $200,000 final bid.

At one point, when the crowd was asked to suggest an opening bid, one woman offered $100,000 for a 1,757-square-foot home in Villa Serena with a listing price of $206,500.

"They're not going to take 100 grand. I mean I could tell you, they're not going to let you sign on that," Deiro said.

She quickly came back with a $120,000 offer. The final offer was $130,000.

Deiro said he was satisfied after the auction, getting rid of three model homes in Villa Serena among others.

Some people in the audience were just observing, like Stan Yost and Larry Puchala, residents in Mountain Falls who wanted to see how homes were selling, to see how it would affect their own property values.

Dallas Hart said he would have bid on a home if prices had been more reasonable. He mentioned some new homes have been selling at $70 per square foot recently.

Real estate broker Trish Rippie said if one home would have sold Saturday, she would have made a sale. The Mountain Falls auction showed how tough a market it is for sellers.

"When you come to an auction and nobody even bids on half the properties, that tells you something," Rippie said.

As of Thursday, Deiro said some of the offers were accepted, while they were still working with buyers on the others.

Deiro denied an accusation there were shills in the audience, bidding up the price on property.

"Shills are used when its an absolute auction and they're covering the low side so it doesn't go too cheap," Deiro said. "It's against the law to use a shill. The unscrupulous auctioneers, you might see shills with people who come from outside of town for an estate auction," Deiro said. "We're a family business for 30 years. We've never had anybody in the audience do that."