Despite foreclosure starts in Ohio dropping to their lowest rate since 2000, Gryphon Auction Group and auctioneer Richard Kruse have seen a 300% increase in online auctions of distressed real estate over the past year.
The company, which specializes in corporate wind down and asset liquidation, has been quite busy. On the high side Gryphon sold the former Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) headquarters for close to 3.5-million-dollars to Columbus City Schools and on the low side was the sale of a single family home in Youngstown to a local investor for only $4,000, plus another 500 properties in the middle.
Kruse attributes much of the growth to the passage of HB390 in late 2016 which allowed for qualified Private Selling Officers to sell commercial and residential foreclosure properties online only bypassing the county sheriffs.
“Our Private Selling Officer process is more efficient and considerably faster than traditional Sheriff Sales and provides asset promotion and marketing that you won’t see with the old process,” Kruse said. “We are receiving dozens of calls a day from prospective purchasers and are again seeing bank REO assets in our offerings. That hasn’t happened much since 2008 or 2009.”
Kruse has also found his commercial clients are more inclined to use online auctions for assets outside the PSO process because of the efficiency and exposure that the online process provides.
“We are getting national exposure on our assets,” Kruse said. “For example, even though the ECOT building ended up selling to a local buyer, we had bidders from all over the country viewing the asset.”
Kruse began working on privatizing Ohio’s foreclosure auctions in late 2014 assisting with proposed language for the new PSO law, even testifying at Ohio State House hearings. Since then he has spoken to the Ohio Auctioneers Association, oversaw a distressed asset sale panel at the 2017 National Auctioneers Association Conference and presented multiple times to different committees of the Ohio Bar Association.
For details about the upcoming auction and property details, visit www.gryphonusa.com or call (614) 774-4118.
About Mr. Kruse
Richard F. Kruse is Managing Partner of Gryphon USA, Ltd. The company oversees a receivership & asset management group, a commercial auction business and, in conjunction with Borror Properties, a full-service real estate advisory practice. He is also a founding member of the Ohio Foreclosure Auction Group, a partnership of six senior real estate auctioneers throughout the State of Ohio, specializing in sales of real property in foreclosure proceedings.
