How is it?

[moldog]

That the closing dates of an auction can continuously keep changing. I've been following a property in Santa Fe, and the closing date for the same deal must have changed 3 times already. Are they allowed to just keep extending the date if insufficient bids are received?????????????

[lhbrown]

Hi moldog,
LL is in the process of changing their bidding system over to something akin to E-bay's auto-bidding (read up on the new LL Auto-Bidding announcement). The same thing happened to me. I looked at a property I was really interested in that was supposed to close on April 2, at 2:30PST and had one bidder on it. I wanted to wait just a little longer before placing my bid. When I looked next, the biding time was upped to April 15 at 2:30 PST. So, I definitely did not want to put my bid in. However, I wrote LL a note to LL inquiring about availability, mentioning the bid closing time on April 15.
On April 3rd I looked again at the property and the bid had closed on April 2, at 2:30PST with one bidder. LL called me with the availability dates I wanted. I complained that the bid had closed on April 2nd after it showed it was going to close on April 15 and now it was not on at all anymore, not even for April 15. The LL representative explained to me that the LL Marketing team had gone into the system and changed things without consulting the rest of the staff that handles the bids. She assured me the same bid was going to come on again on April 8 and will close on April 15 but under the new Auto-bidding system.
Obviously, I was not happy how LL handled this switch-over to the new system. The LL representative assured me they too were unhappy on how this was done, but there was nothing she could do about it.
So, you saw exactly the same thing as I experienced... bummer..... Let's hope we will get the properties we wanted when they go on the auction again.