WINNING BID: $2.96 MILLION

Auction sales often conjure up the sight of some huckster speed-talking gibberish into a microphone while driving up the price of anything from prized heifers to granny’s antique china collection. Now, thanks to Harcourts, a wellestablished global real estate brand, you might score a screaming deal on residential or recreational property via online auction.

Theo Birkner of Harcourts Real Estate Vancouver orchestrated the online auction of an award-winning 370-square-metre home (with enormous carriage house/garage) at Mackenzie Landing, an exclusive ski in/out neighbourhood at Revelstoke Mountain Resort.

The luxury second-home market can be quite fickle, and the property hadn’t garnered much interest when it was earlier listed at $4.25 million. After publicizing the property with a “suggested” starting price of $2 million, the bidding wars began.

“We had six registered bidders; two from Revelstoke, two from Toronto, one from

Calgary and another in California.”

The bidding was live-streamed on the Harcourts Auctions website and the masterpiece in Douglas fir and

Kettle Valley fieldstone eventually sold, Birkner says, “with great fanfare for $2,960,000. The sellers were thrilled with the amount of attention that the property received, and the buyer is a keen skier from Toronto who was seduced by the immaculate attention to detail and convenient on-slope location.”

_STEVEN THRENDYLE