40 New Condos Going to Auction at The Colonnade at Kentlands

• October 1st 2009

by Will Smith

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The Colonnade at Kentlands has just announced that 40 of its remaining units will be auctioned off on Saturday, October 24th.

The Colonnade is a rental-conversion project that delivered in late 2005. Located in the heart of the new urbanism community The Kentlands in Gaithersburg, Maryland, The Colonnade is about 12 minutes northwest of Rockville and 40 minutes from downtown DC (map).

The 40 condos include one, two, and three-bedrooms and range in size from 770 to 1,500 square feet. The minimum bid is $169,000 for the most affordable units and $285,000 for the most expensive. Models are available for viewing most days between now and the auction.

The Colonnade is considered a more upscale sister project to The Fitz in Rockville, which also held an auction to move 40 of its remaining units earlier this year. That auction was considered a big success, according to Susan Piracini of Cornerstone Partners, the firm that handled sales and marketing for the auction and is also handling it for The Colonnade. All 40 condos were sold at the auction, and the project’s remaining inventory of about 15 units sold out within a few weeks after that.

Thanks to the auction, The Fitz was the fourth fastest-selling project across the DC metropolitan area during the first half of this year, according to the ranking we published today, The Top 20 Fastest Selling Condos.

Piracini said that the condos at The Fitz auction sold for about 30 percent above the minimum bid, on average. That number was still about 25 percent lower than the market-rate price the condos had been selling for prior to the auction, and it became the new price at which the remaining 15 units were sold. (Condo auctions are a way for developers to not only sell a lot of units, but also quickly figure out what the market actually considers them to be worth.)

While the dynamics of every auction are different, potential bidders for a condo at The Colonnade should bear this 30 percent figure in mind as a rough benchmark for how high to bid.

To register for the auction, visit The Colonnade website. Following are some photos of the project.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.production.logicbrush.com/articles/blog/40_new_condos_going_to_auction_at_the_colonnade_at_kentlands/1370.