With the housing market slowing down as interest rates rise, Unreserved is bringing its auction-based real estate platform to Sudbury.
Unreserved is an auction platform for real estate buyers and sellers. For instance, in a regular bidding war for real estate, buyers won’t know what the other person is offering for the property. With Unreserved, the information is fully transparent on their platform and buyers can bid comfortably with the knowledge of other bids.
This format is “bringing more equitable solutions to combative real estate practices like blind bidding, and preemptive bully offers,” states a press release from the company.
Unreserved started this practice before the Ontario government introduced new real estate regulations on April 19 that would allow home sellers to share bids openly to buyers, which won’t take effect until 2023.
Their operations started in Ottawa before they expanded to Toronto. Now Sudbury will have access to the real-time auctions that are changing the way people buy and sell their homes.
“There’s no hiding anything, everything’s out in the open,” said Didi Henri, the lead property expert for Unreserved’s Sudbury office.
“From a seller’s perspective, we charge an auction fee and not commission,” she said.
Henri said Unreserved offers different packages that can include social media campaigns, home inspections and home staging. They even work with a company to provide paint jobs or other repairs to present the house to the max potential and value.
For buyers, the real estate agents with Unreserved will put a reserve price on the homes that are being sold. From there, verified buyers can bid in a minimum of $2,500 increments within the auctioning period. Buyers also have access to seeing other bids, open houses and private showings.
The reserve price for the property that is for-sale will be set by property experts like Henri, who added that Unreserved is not governed by the Ontario Real Estate Association.
For Henri, who has 17 years in real estate, Unreserved has brought “fun” back to selling houses.
“I just can’t wait to make it fun again, for people to buy and sell their homes because right now in the traditional market, it’s not fun, it’s very stressful.”
Visit the Unreserved website here. Their office is located at 1113 Lasalle Blvd.
Eden Suh is a new media reporter at Sudbury.com.
