The team will be dedicated to clients wanting to use a sealed bid process for real estate disposition. Two successful transactions, BP Amoco and Houston Community College, have triggered the special division. Cushman and Wakefield's Houston staff had secured in excess of $10 million for BP Amoco in the sale of more than 8,000 acres. Houston Community College had unloaded eight properties, reaping more than $14.3 million in a sealed bid sale.
The team will be targeting corporations and multi-property owners looking to sell, Todd Mason, a Cushman & Wakefield senior director, explains to GlobeSt.com. About five years ago, corporate America had taken a long, hard look at real estate assets and decided there had been a surplus.
John Studdard, a BP Amoco real estate official, sings the praises of a sealed bid sale, "Traditional marketing had not produced the results we wanted," he recalls of the 8,000-acre sales effort. "Our properties covered the value spectrum from wetlands to commercial-retail." The process carries a 99.9% closing certainty and, in BP Amoco's case, a higher sales price. "We needed a real estate partner who would work toward our goals and not just focus on the high-value portion of our portfolio," Studdard tells GlobeSt.com.
"Buyers know they only have one shot to make as good an offer as they can," says Mason, also the president of the Houston Association of Realtors. In the case of Houston Community College, a sealed bid had reaped in excess of the properties' appraised value.
Mason doubts that many will try to compete with Cushman and Wakefield for the trade since data compilation and necessary marketing can eat up a lot of man-hours. In addition to completing due diligence prior to sale, a full marketing campaign is launched to notify any and all prospective bidders. It's not a game for small firms and in the early 1990s, some government agencies had learned it wasn't a game for them either. The problem, says Mason, is that the government agencies had failed to provide enough information prior to sale time.
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