The setting is judicial, marked by orderly chairs or benches. Numbered paddles are offered demurely at first and more aggressively as bidding proceeds, an obsessive compulsive's version of ping-pong. Finally, a winner emerges as the other bidders fade into the background having been pushed beyond their monetary allowances, or perhaps their own judgment as to an object's value.

This is the Hollywood version of an auction. But this is not Sotheby's and no one is bidding on antediluvian pottery, they're grinding through analytics and squeezing yield from distressed hotels, discounted condominiums and lenders' balance sheets. Interested parties are given all the necessary information on an asset, but it is the bidder's job to double check its accuracy over the course of a specified time limit, say six weeks, and the bidders often pay for the privilege of competing; regularly 10% of your proposed bid price. And in the coming year or two, in particular the last quarter of 2011, this less glamorous process will get a lot busier.

"I look at auctions as a form of price discovery," remarks Sandy Monaghan, managing director, head of Cushman & Wakefield's Resolution Group and a member of the DAI editorial advisory board. "When you're in a depressed real estate market, as we've been in, it's difficult to determine where the buyers are going to come from and what, if anything, a buyer is willing to pay." Auctions mean opportunity for banks, condos and hotels, especially. Failed condo projects have used auctions to move units and build a property's sales momentum, notes Monaghan.