Virginia Beach Town Center condos sold in auction

VIRGINIA BEACH

More condos sold at the Westin Virginia Beach Town Center Residences in about 30 minutes Sunday than during the past two years.

Armada Hoffler, the 38-story tower's developer, hired an auctioneer to sell 18 of the 24 unsold condos at the Westin residences in a bid to stir up interest and find buyers.

Winning bids ranged from $181,000 for a one-bedroom unit to $750,000 for a penthouse suite, said Jon Gollinger, CEO of Accelerated Marketing Partners LLC, the Boston-based company that managed the Sunday auction.

Altogether, sales from the auction amounted to more than $7.5 million, he said.

The auction also spurred interest from potential buyers for some of the building's remaining units, Gollinger added. As a result, the developer is close to reaching a deal for at least one more of the penthouse units, he said.

"The competition was genuinely great for every unit we put up there," he said.

Condos in the tower, the tallest building in Virginia, sold strongly after it opened in 2007. By March 2009, the developer had sold 88 of the building's 120 units. Since then, sales had stagnated, with just eight more units selling in the two years before the auction.

Gollinger estimated that roughly 150 people attended Sunday, with between 60 and 70 people bidding.

Armada Hoffler initially announced it planned to auction 16 units in the building. However, given the interest from potential buyers, the company put up two additional units for bid, Gollinger said.

The most recent asking prices for the 16 units ranged from $258,400 for a 750-square-foot, one-bedroom condo to $1.7 million for a 2,739-square-foot penthouse. None of the properties sold for more than the most recent asking price, Gollinger said.

"It's one of these sales where the seller might have wanted to get a little more money, and the buyers might have wanted to get it for a little less," he said.

Ken and Sharree Ryder won the bidding for a two-bedroom unit on the 29th floor. The couple from Haymarket put in a final bid of $501,000 for the roughly 2,300-square-foot condo. The last asking price for the property was a little more than $730,000.

"I'm not sure I've ever been so excited in my life," Sharree Ryder said.

She and her husband, who own several Planet Fitness clubs in Hampton Roads, had been looking for a second home in Virginia Beach for a couple of years.

"We already stay at the Westin all the time," Ryder said. "So it's a perfect location for us."

Josh Brown, (757) 446-2318, josh.brown@pilotonline.com