Alberta collected record revenues from Crown land auctions in the 2005-06 fiscal year, raking in more than $3.4 billion, the province said yesterday.
Public offerings of oil and natural gas rights are held every two weeks in Calgary, with industry bidding on mineral rights through a competitive sealed-bid auction process.
Energy Minister Greg Melchin said the auctions are an important component in managing the province’s resources.
“High resource revenues, including land sales bonuses, have helped reduce the province’s debt, increase savings and fund priority programs,” said Melchin.
“These resources belong to Albertans and play …

A luxury home overlooking the Columbia River Gorge sold at auction for $4.84 million Thursday, with J.P. King Auction Company, Gadsden, Ala., managing the sale.
Thirteen bidders crowded around the auctioneer’s podium in the Great Room overlooking the gorge, opening the bidding at $2 million and continuing upward for about 20 minutes to the final sale price.
Purchasing the home was Howard Hedinger, chairman of Portland-based American Industries.
“This was a beautiful home in an unbelievable location, so we were expecting a strong turnout. Obviously, the bidders agreed with us,” said Craig …

US Auction News
Looking to get surplus government-owned property back on its tax rolls, Anne Arundel County said Wednesday it will auction a one-acre piece of Edgewater real estate formerly home to a police station.
The property being auctioned is on the corner of Route 2 and Virginia Avenue, in the southern part of the county. It’s the former 40-year home of Anne Arundel’s Southern District police station.
The property is located in a C-2 commercial office district, county officials said, and has been appraised by the state at $1.1 million.
County Executive Janet …

US Auction News
The historic Fox Theatre has been sold, but its future as an actual theater is still up in the air.
The building, which has been empty for more than two years, was bought Tuesday at an auction in Hays by Brooks Kellogg of Steamboat Springs, Colo. for $101,000.
“I have a couple ideas that might work out for the theater,” said Kellogg, who works for Chadwick Real Estate Group and is a 1965 alumnus of Fort Hays State University.

US Auction News
Buyers were wary of the Florida scrub jays in the fourth and final North Port lot auction.
Of the 77 lots that remained unsold when the auction closed Tuesday afternoon, almost half had been designated as scrub jay habitat. Only 10 lots denoted as scrub jay habitat were sold.
Scrub-jays aside, about two-thirds of the 223 available lots were sold in the fourth session. Of those that did sell, most sold for somewhat more than the starting bid amount, and one lot sold for $64,250.
During a three-month period, more than …

US Auction News
The US State Land Department was to auction 60 acres of prime infill commercial land near Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport at its west Washington Street office in Phoenix.
The land, appraised at nearly $16 million, is located at the southwest corner of the Loop 202 and the intersection of 40th Street.
The property is planned for a prime flex office, industrial and warehouse complex.

UK Auction News
A barclays bank in Northumberland – UK has sold for a record low rental yield at a London auction.
The 3,500sq ft building on Ponteland’s Main Street sold at Allsop’s auction for £1.01m – more than twice its £475,000 guide price – to a North-East private investor.
The ground floor of the two-storey building is let on a 20-year lease to Barclays while the upper floor is let to Northumberland County Council until the end of this month.
The property currently produces an annual rent of £27,500, with the selling price …

US Auction News
Press Release
Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers (TSX:RBA)(NYSE:RBA), the world’s largest industrial auctioneer, today announced that it conducted what it believes to be the largest single-owner unreserved agricultural auction ever held in Canada. The auction, held on Friday, March 24, took place near Stockholm, Saskatchewan (in the Yorkton area), and generated gross auction sales of more than CAD$7.7 million.
The large, unreserved farm and real estate dispersal auction was conducted for General Resources Inc. The auction included 83 quarter sections of land (one quarter section is 160 acres) and all the equipment …

US Auction News
In a brief 6 1/2-hour period, on Saturday, March 18th, Proxibid — the Omaha, Neb.-based firm that provides auction houses with a method for broadcasting live auctions via the Internet — of the $24.5 million in sales, Proxibid posted sales in excess of $5 million, a new record for an online bidding platform.
“We hosted sixteen auctions that day, with a total of more than 900 registered bidders online,” said Bruce Hoberman, CEO of Proxibid. “It was the first real test of our new live Internet bidding application designed …

Press Release
With over 1 million of the 1.4 million homes sold in the UK each year being viewed online, how long before the estate agency business goes into deep decline as buyers and sellers deal direct over the internet? Very soon according to IMRG and first4sale.com – who forecast at least 700,000 homes being sold in the UK each year without a traditional estate agent by 2010.
When the dotcom bubble was first rising, the prediction was that estate agency business would go the way of the travel agency business …