For the second time in less than a year, an online auction of the Bon Carré Technology Center failed to generate a bid the sellers of the 713,000-square-foot property were willing to accept.
Bidders were invited to submit offers on the property between April 15-17, according to the website of California-based online auction house, Ten-X Commercial. But for unclear reasons the property didn’t sell, according to a Ten-X employee reached Monday by telephone.
It’s a familiar story. Last November, a three-day auction failed to produce a buyer. But then, the minimum bid was listed at $12 million.
During the more recent auction, the minimum bid was a mere $6 million—a fraction of the $36 million mortgage the center’s previous owners, Commercial Properties Realty Trust, owed when it defaulted on its mortgage in 2017.
It’s hard to know how to interpret the lack of interest in the center without knowing what the out-of-state lenders who own the property are looking for, according to local commercial appraiser Wesley Moore.
“Was there a reserve amount, or was it an absolute auction without reserve?” Moore says. “You can have a low starting bid that means nothing if the reserve amount—the minimum amount you would have to bid to actually acquire the property—is materially higher.”
Moore suspects the sellers were looking for a reserve amount “much closer to the tens of millions they loaned on the property.” Otherwise, he says, the property would likely have generated a lot of interest at just $6 million.
It is unclear what the future holds for the property, first listed for sale in 2016 by a Dallas-based broker, Creighton Stark, for Colliers International. Reached by phone this morning, Stark hung up.
A local leasing agent with Beau Box Commercial Real Estate declines to comment.
