Going, Going, Gone
By LAUREL BUSBY News Editor
Palisadian-Post, Special Section, Pages 10 & 11

To purchase the house at 42 Via de la Paz a buyer must come to the house for an auction April 20th with a $50,000 cashier’s check in hand and the gumption to place the winning bid.

Auctions aren’t a common way to sell property, but they do have their proponents. One virtue of an auction is that the sale is quick, and buyers are attracted because they usually pay a reasonable price, said auctioneer Mario Piatelli, who is handling the sale. Within three months, sellers typically have their proceeds, while traditional sales through a realtor could take up to a year for an expensive property.

For the Via house, Piatelli expects 100 auction attendees—80 “lookie loos” and 20 buyers—Saturday. The house came to auction after owner UCLA physician Dr. Margaret Jones died. Her trust called for the proceeds of the sale of her three bedroom, two-bath home to endow a chair in cerebral palsy at a large local institution. Jones was a pediatrician who pioneered therapy for infants with cerebral palsy. Before her death, Jones had worked with Piatelli on several charity auctions.

Jones’ trustee Carol Hurley said, “We want to get the endowment started as soon as possible. We felt we could get the most income from the auction.”

Piatelli’s typical clients include anyone who wants to sell property quickly, including heirs, people who simply have a desire to move as soon as they can, and those who have fallen into hard financial times. He added that sometimes buyers get a bargain. For example, Palisadian Joe Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Mania Mountains Conservancy, purchased the approximately 638-acre Broome Ranch near Thousand Oaks for the Conservancy for $4.25 million in a 1993 probate sale. The bank owed $10 million on the property, so the bank took a loss to the Conservancy’s gain.

Piatelli has sold everything from inexpensive timeshares to multi-million dollar commercial buildings at auction. Sometimes, he even helps sellers get out of a jam. For example, one client had money problems and his property was seized by the IRS; Piatelli approached the IRS about an 60 day extension for the fellow and sold the property gaining a $100,000 profit for the man, who before had only debts on it.

His business, The Piatelli Company, in Beverly Hills pioneered the real. estate auction business in California in 1955. But Piatelli had started a similar business 10 years earlier when World War II ended and he was placed in charge of liquidating millions of dollars in military surplus equipment in Honolulu. He formed his company in 1948 and soon had 300 employees. They sold machinery, ships and scrap metal among other items.

After relocating to Los Angeles, Piatelli moved into real estate. “It’s an interesting business. There’s not too much competition in it,” Piatelli noted. He generally finds clients through referrals, and monetary crisis is usually the reason for the sale.

“In good times and bad times, there are always people who get in trouble,” Piatelli said. “They spend more money than they have. They get behind in their mortgage payment. They get a mistress, buy a boat and a Rolls, then bankruptcy court.”

For expensive properties, which can take up to a year to sell, an auction can create instant solvency for the seller. However, Piatelli said proper advertisement is the key to the seller getting a good price. Once the property is auctioned, it spends about 30 to 45 days in escrow before the purchase is finalized. Generally, Piatelli oversees one to three auctions a month. He and the buyer’s realtor often split earnings of about 6 percent of the sales price.

To protect the buyer, Piatelli said he researches the property to ensure that it will be a good purchase. For every 10 deals sellers bring him, “two of them make sense.” He said the seller may owe too much money on the property to make the sale feasible, or the seller may have a piece of land “in the middle of nowhere.”

“We’re very careful that we don’t stick some poor buyer with something that’s junk.”

Contact The Piatelli Company at (323) 272-4444 or visit the Web site at www.piatelli.com.