A group of commercial properties on Fore and Wharf streets will hit the virtual auction block Monday, when the previously foreclosed-on buildings’ loan servicer will attempt to sell them online.
The block of properties in the Old Port, comprising 432, 434, 436 and 446 Fore St. and 42 and 50 Wharf St. totals just under 50,000 square feet of restaurant/bar, residential and retail space. Commercial tenants include Buck’s Naked BBQ, Oasis, Fore Play, Gorgeous Gelato, Pearl Lounge, Merry Table, Ollo Salon, Blazin Ace, 51 Wharf Street Restaurant and Shine Salon.
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Participation in the 48-hour auction, which begins Monday at noon on auction.com, requires a deposit of $25,000 and a minimum bid of $2 million. One of the properties’ brokers, Michael Cardente of Portland-based Cardente Real Estate, said he did not know whether the seller has set a reserve price for the auction. A reserve price is the price below which the seller will decline to sell. It is higher than the minimum bid and rarely disclosed.
Cardente said the seller, a limited-liability company called BACM 2007-3 Wharf Street LLC, had not previously listed the properties for sale.
BACM’s parent company, Florida-based LNR Property LLC, prefers to sell properties via auction, he said. “We were hired specifically to market these properties for auction,” Cardente said.
LNR is what’s known as a “special servicer,” a company that facilitates the repayment of delinquent commercial real estate loans that have been divided into tranches and sold off to investors as commercial mortgage-backed securities. It has a sister company, LNR Partners, that is responsible for selling properties that have been foreclosed on.
The properties in the Old Port were foreclosed on by LNR and put up for auction in 2011, but no third-party buyer was willing to beat the special servicer’s bid of $5.9 million. The previous owner had purchased the block of properties in 2007 for $8.3 million but later defaulted on the loan.
J. Craig Anderson can be contacted at 791-6390 or at:
canderson@pressherald.com
Twitter: @jcraiganderson
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