Auction.comReviews 434

I am remodeling my new Home, I purchased on auction.com! I won the auction for 2500+ a $2000 buyers premium, I read some reviews and I was scared for all the bad reviews on this page so I contact my lawyer he said it was a legit company! He said that the only problem with auction.com is that you never know if the house owes any Taxes, water billsI I paid my lawyer and extra $500 but he make sure my house had clean title and if there were any violations to the property, once he was done with the investigation he said to proceed that everything was fine I signed a contract, and send a wire payment then Sellers bank called me a month after too to do the closing it just takes patience but I'm very happy with my new home.

I was participant of community thread their "transparency" where customers to communicate with other customers feature.

To be fair thead was to discuss desceptive practices users have experienced with site and thread was "locked" by administration so no further commentary could be made on subject by admins.

Company blatantly misleads customers and actively blocks users from providing experiences that are not to their benefit to future users.

Came across their website and saw a property i was interested in. Went to take a look at the outside of the property and it had a for-sale sing in the garden, contacted the agent who informed me the property is under contract and has been for a few weeks. Contacted auction.com about the listing that's supposed to be going to auction. The customer support agent was horrendous. How she got a job is customer service is beyond me... If you want to wast your time then follow this company..

Auction.com is a scam. They hurry the process along so you don't have time to go through the proper channels to insure your financial safety, they extend the auction time to keep driving the bid up, and then they want you to sign a contract before you or your attorney has time to review it, otherwise they threaten to put the house back on the auction block. You will end up paying $2500 PLUS 5% or the cost of the house to auction.com which in our case drove the price of the house and bid $10,000 which then made the house purchase unattractive.
They make it look like the $2500 fee is the only fee, then slam you with 5% more. As you can see from all their reviews they are a shady company and we will be filing legal action against them.

The Auction.com contracts all state that the seller will not pay for an owner's policy of title insurance. Linear Title slides one on the buyer side of the HUD without EVER asking if the buyer wanted it. On the day of closing, I was told that they would need to get a new deed if we don't want the title insurance and we should have told them when their legal dept. asked for marital status for deed prep. Never asked if we wanted to pay for the insurance. Told me that the seller would not grant a General Warranty Deed without the owner's policy being purchased. The Deed was prepared several weeks before the closing... and at closing we are told they would need a new deed and the seller might not sign one? This is a shady way of adding premium dollars to their pockets. I am a Realtor and have worked in the title industry for years... BEWARE!

It is not clear on any of the transaction details, or the Terms and Conditions PDF. It is probably in the contract, but I am too disgusted to look. On a house for $15,000.00, winning bid, the closing costs are $1,776.50 through Linear Title. In my area, $550-600 including title insurance is most common. There is no possible way to get out of this.

Linear Title describes itself as a Fortune 500 Company on their Facebook site.
How COULDN'T they be? They have a contract with auction.com and charge 5 x's more than any title company.

Based on the reviews, I was aware that auction.com may internally bid up the auction price, acting as another bidder. I am fine with that as i am sure they are trying to obtain the reserve price set by the bank. As an investor, you bid only to a price you are comfortable with.
In any case, I won the auction, and had to provide them with funds and paperwork within 2 hours! Very unreasonable, even for someone who has a flexible schedule.
We were suppose to close within 20 days, mid Dec. It is now mid Febuary and I have had to sign an extension 4 times. This is a cash purchase, so there is no reason for delays and the home is vacant. Part of the problem is their 3rd party closer who was quite useless but either way charges $1200. I used my own title company and she has been the one doing the job of the seller's title company. Closing was delayed bc the bank rejected outstanding HOA fees in the amount of $400.00. There is no way one can obtain clear title without this lien being paid off. This debate could have delayed closing for months. I offered to pay the $400. Still no closing as of today. Requested another extension letter. In the meantime, the seller has paid in excess of $3000 in taxes and insurance bc of these delays.
I will say that the customer service and the representatives at auction.com have tried to assist. IS it possible that they can only move as fast as the seller?

In any case, if this goes through, I would still purchase again, but they would not be my first outlet. If it doesnt, I have every intention on filing a complaint. I purchase 4-5 homes a year to rehab and resell. This was my first experience with Auction.com.

But also seemed to run in circles so it wasn't just me. I read their reviews on their site and all were very positive but as you can see from this site they must be filtering them and just posting good ones or outright fabricated ones. I have a feeling that they have a very low percentage of successful closings.

There was a home listed for auction in our city. It was marked as occupied on their website. The website stated it was illegal to disturb the occupant. I did a drive by inspection. The house looked abandoned. I stopped at a neighbors house to see what information I could get about the house. The neighbor said the house had been empty for some time. He said the house was used as a meth lab. I went back to the property and noticed a sheet of paper taped to the front door. It was a blank sheet of paper. It had a small tear in it. Underneath was an orange sheriff notice that a meth lab was seized at the property. When I contacted auction.com and asked why they would cover the sheriffs notice they told me they were not aware of any such notice. Give me a break the bank does occupancy inspections of their foreclosed homes. It was a no brainer the house was not occupied. It was obvious that a battering ram had been used on the front door. Someone covered the sheriffs notice. Ok maybe it was the owner of the house. The photo of the home posted on auction.com is taken at just such an angle that the notice and damage to the front door is not shown. The notice was taped to the sliding glass door in the front of the house. Notice the tree conveniently covering the front door damaged by the battering ram. It seems to me that there was an effort to cover up the fact that the house was used as a meth lab. Ok banks may be exempt from disclosure laws but if they knew and covered it up that just seems like pure fraud to me.

Update 2/20/2014. To be fair, I recently heard of someone in our area who supposedly did get a good deal on this site, but I don't know the details. So I guess it is possible. But I will re-iterate this point. The bids start artificially low and in every case I've seen you have to bid it up quite a ways to get it. And it depends ultimately if you intend to live it in or not. As an example. I bid on a house that started at 45,000 twice. The estimated value of the home after 20,000 of fix up was 145,000. This was verified by my very experienced Realtor who has sold homes in this area. I gave up bidding on it after two online auctions. I looked recently in the public records to see it ultimately sold for 120,000. I'm not exactly sure what the people where thinking who bought it, but it sure didnt' seem like a very good deal to me. After paying cash and fixing it up, it will be worth pretty much what they have into it. I wouldn't usually pay full price for a house I can't even go inside to check its condition. You might as well buy one off the regular market in that case.

Original review:

Don't be lured in by their opening bids thinking you will get a great deal, the opening bids they post are false bids to get people excited to bid on their properties. They are not even close to the minimum bids the bank will accept so you waste your time thinking you will get a good deal. Believe me I've bid on several of them.

In fact, in my area there currently at least 4 houses that have been put up for bid over and over and over (maybe at least 6 times) on their web site over two months. The opening bid is ridiculously low ($*******) but even after the price is bid up to $1******* plus, it never sells. Even if they say it does, it shows up again on the web site next week again.

These houses like most of them are in poor shape and need 10's of thousands of repair but they keep holding out for full price as if they are fixed up! It's a waste of time.

Waste of time with a crappy company (unless of course you want to get ripped off!)

I wrote a review on Auction.com regarding a house I bid on & won, but could not close on for 90 days because it had an IRS tax lien of $80,000 on it. I said I would post again if I received my earnest money back. Auction.com was very prompt. I got all $7886 of my earnest money refunded by check last Friday, 1/23/15.

I have tried to purchase 4 houses with Auction.com none of them went through. The last one was on the county court house steps with cash buyers. Auction starts at 9am, at 10:30 we were still all standing around. I asked if the home I was interested in was actually going to be auctioned off as their web site indicates and they could not give me an answer. Do not waste your time with them. They will not give you the reserve amount on the property so you waste much time bidding and they never intended to sell it to you in the first place. HUGE WASTE OF TIME.

I registered and put up $2500 on a credit card, no problem. I bid on a house and won the auction with the reserve being met. I wired them the earnest money and signed the documents. Two weeks later they told me the deal was off and they would return my earnest money. It is now 2 weeks later and I still do not have my earnest money back although they have relisted the property several times! They say the property is occupied but it is not.

This is not a scam (some homes do get closed) but there are many things that they do that I believe are illegal and in my opinion they need to be sued and humbled. Here are a few of the lawsuits that I think people should look at filing against Auction.com, the seller (bank) and the title companies:

1. Section 8 of RESPA violations - The title company cannot charge for unearned fees. According to an Auction.com employee who I communicated with, the title company that they require you to use charge higher fees as they are recovering the cost for all the pre-foreclosure title work and title report done for the sale. I believe it is illegal to pass this on to the buyer but that is what they do. Purportedly this is spelled out in the agreement between the title company and Auction.com. A good attorney should be able to get this agreement during discovery and find out if Auction.com pays anything for the pre-sale title work.

2. Section 9 of RESPA violations - Under RESPA they can not require you to use a specific title company as a condition of sale but that is exactly what they do.

If you win the suit you get triple the cost of everything paid to the title company (all those high fees x 3) plus attorney fees and court cost.

Finally, everyone who feels that they have a legitimate complaint should file a complaint with HUD, the attorney general and the local real estate licensing board in their state that licenses Auction.com. Google RESPA and filing complaints.

The above is my opinion and my opinion only. I recommend anyone who reads this speak with an attorney of your choosing to ascertain the facts and merits of any case.

http://nypost.com/2014/12/25/lawsuit-targets-googles-auction-com/

auction.com is FRAUD

Many have been scammed by this company --- This company is a sham

I'm rating the buying experience, not the company (their agents were always helpful). STAY AWAY! I won a bid 10/4/14 and submitted the deposit and signed papers on time. I am still waiting to close. Nationstar Mortgage is the owner of the foreclosed house and their closer hasn't contacted me once to let me know what is taking so long. The settlement co. Just said they are waiting for title co.(Solutionstar) to send the lien certificate but I don't believe that story... I got the lien certificate in 5 business days. They e-mailed me a closing date extension form two times which I signed and I still did not close on the house on the proposed date. My money is tied up and I could of bought other properties by now. In the dark and very frustrated. I hope I get my money back if the bank tries to cancel the sale.

Update #1: I finally did the online settlement two months late. I had to go haggle the state and city sales and recording taxes and fees because they were too high. Got inside the house and there was major water damage, stolen HVAC unit, and stolen pipes throughout. Neighbors said the bank's assigned contractors looked suspicious.

Update #2: Unbelievable! I found out in a difficult way that the house is not in my name yet after two months. My electrician went to get a permit on the house and was told he couldn't. He was so annoyed for wasting his time and money. I went to the city permit office and found out why. I had to call the closing company back and ask why they hadn't submitted the settlement papers. Apparently the settlement papers were rejected by the recording office because the lien certificate had expired by the time it got there. No one had bothered to let me know and I don't think anyone from their office did anything about it. I had to call the office manager to complain and ask them to get the problem rectified ASAP. Four weeks later and I'm still waiting for the house to be recorded in my name. 3/3/14