Online bidding offers new market for housing

The Boston Globe reports:

Ada Focer and her late husband, John Marlier, were urban pioneers when they purchased their home on Ashmont Hill in Dorchester in 1977. At the time, the racial strife of Boston's busing crisis had yet to loosen.


Only one bank would give the couple a mortgage for the house's $30,000 purchase price. ``They were almost giving properties away," Focer said.

She is again a pioneer, as part of a small but growing cadre of Americans who are spurning real estate agents to sell their homes themselves, in online auctions. Bids on her 1886 house were due at 9 p.m. last Tuesday.

Bringing more buyers to the market.We'll bet real estate commissions will have to go down over a long period of time.