bank-owned properties down to about a half-dozen, and contracts

bank-owned properties down to about a half-dozen, and contracts exist on several of those.

“We have a contract on one of our properties for just under $1 million; that’s one of our larger properties, and the deal will probably be consummated in December,” Pace said.

“The longer we have, the better we do insofar as return. The real estate market ... has come back to some extent. We are pretty satisfied with our results so far,” he added.

“The lowest terms, as I recall, that we got on any auction property was 65 percent of the appraised value. They never bring as much [at auction]. We have never sold a piece of property here for under 85 percent of appraised value, the ones we market ourselves. As a rule of thumb, we attempt to get 85 percent of the appraised value,” Pace noted.

The private — non-auction — marketing of RTC holdings is handled in much the same fashion as a homeowner selling a house, Pace said. “We list every property that we market with a local or area realtor, and go through the normal channels.

“We attempt to select people that are in the marketplace that will adequately assist with the marketing,” Pace said. “We do not really do any additional advertising ourselves on that, we sort of let them handle that. This all goes through contracting and we try to spread the listings among the community so that no one person gets more.

“We also accomodate the minority and women-owned businesses in that regard. About 33 percent of all of our contracts have gone to minority and women-owned businesses,” the managing agent said.

But until resolution, Pace will continue the schedule that has now become familiar, one might even say “old.” He flies home to Tennessee on Fridays, taking the return flight Monday morning.

“It’s not bad once you get used to it,” he said, “but I don’t know that I’d recommend this line of work to a young man with a family.”