Real estate auctions, once rare in New England, are on the rise and even gaining some respectability as a way to move property. In some areas, most notably around Boston and in southern Maine and New Hampshire, the number of homes sold at auction has increased as much as 500% since the boom days of 1986. Much of this increase has been due to a jump in foreclosures. Manchester's New Hampshire Sunday News, for instance, has 3 or 4 full pages in the classified each week taken up entirely by foreclosure auction notices, most of them for singlefamily homes. But not all real-estate auctions are fire sales. Auctioneers have long argued that auctions can be a good way to move property.
