NAPLES, Fla. — Eager to move on, former golf pro and Golf Channel analyst Mark Lye has put his home up for auction at Mediterra in North Naples.
He’s hired an agency, Elite Auctions, in hopes of speeding up a sale.
It’s worked for him before — twice.
He’s sold two other homes in gated golf communities in the Naples area this way, one in 2018 in Talis Park and another in 2020 at The Isles of Collier Preserve.
Well, kind of, as the auctions never actually happened. He canceled both after they spurred strong offers ahead of the scheduled events from serious buyers who feared losing out in a bidding war.
“Did I get top dollar? No, but I sure got offers the first two times to execute,” Lye said.
Once again, Lye isn’t going far.
Soon-to-be-empty nesters with two teenagers in high school, he and his wife are making a switch to condo life.
“We’re just scaling down,” said Lye, who is 69.
With a closing looming on their new high-rise residence at Kalea Bay’s third tower, the Lyes are in a time crunch to sell their current home.
“Our new place will be done in November,” he said.
Their abode at Mediterra has been on the market since April, reflecting a cooling of a white-hot real estate market.
“My broker said: ‘Don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine.’ Finally, it started to be July, then August. I said to the broker ‘if it doesn’t sell by Sept. 1, I’m going to Elite,'” Lye said.
And, so he did, with no offers on the table.
“It puts a sense of urgency on things,” Lye said of the auction.
He admits the carrying costs in a gated golf community, such as Mediterra, are high, often with big, unexpected assessments for maintenance and upgrades, so there’s reason for urgency, besides wanting to move on to the new chapter of his life.
“I don’t think the gated communities are for us anymore,” Lye said. “We don’t like too many rules.”
The family still plays golf, but elsewhere.
While he owns and has interests in other residential property in Southwest Florida, Lye said he plans to lease those, with his heart set on his nearly-ready condo in Kalea Bay.
“The amenities at Kalea Bay are off the charts,” he said. “The view is drop-dead gorgeous. It’s really first-class.”
Built in 2013, the Lyes’ sprawling home in Mediterra is currently listed at $4.25 million. Stretching 4,117 square feet, it has four bedrooms and four bathrooms, overlooking a freshwater lake.
Among its stand-out features? A guest cabana with a full-size bathroom, kitchenette, private entry and attached three-car garage, an upgraded pool and spa overlooking the water, and impact-resistant sliding glass doors that open the entire back end of the residence to an expansive screened lanai.
The Lyes made many improvements to the home.
The residence doesn’t include golf membership on the two Tom Fazio-designed courses in the neighborhood.
Zillow.com shows the Lyes raised their asking price on Sept. 1 by $250,000.
Property records show the couple purchased the home for $1.7 million in May 2020.
Elite does one auction per market at a time, so clients aren’t competing with one another for the same buyers. Lye likes that approach, as well as the way the company markets and presents luxury real estate to the marketplace.
While based in Naples, Elite has a national reach, he said, with a much larger database of potential buyers than a local broker.
“They basically go at it full force,” Lye said.
At Elite’s auctions, properties are sold without a reserve, meaning they go to the highest bidder, no matter the price. This is also known as an absolute auction.
The auction for the Lyes’ residence is slated for Oct. 1 at 11 a.m. ET, with registration beginning at 9 a.m. It’s to be held on-site.
Asked whether he thought his home would make it to auction this time around, Lye said he didn’t think so, despite an obvious shift in the local marketplace that had been “freaking on fire,” with far more buyers than sellers and crazy prices.
While home sales have slowed nationally for several reasons, including higher interest rates and recession fears, he said, Florida — and Southwest Florida — remain attractive markets, for those still looking to flee high-crime, high-tax areas, with even higher living costs.
“It was crazy. And it had to subside. But, I still feel like this is a unique area,” Lye said.
An obvious fan of Naples, the native Californian added: “I think there is always an extra zing going on down here.”
He expects the advertised auction to bring in dozens of potential buyers in for private tours — and to generate several offers before the event.
Elaborating on the Lyes’ auction in a phone interview, he said the process will multiply traffic and interest, “demonstrating the power” of the program, designed for non-distressed properties — or properties not on the brink of foreclosure or already bank-owned.
Elite handles the sale of real estate just as Christie’s does for fine paintings, or Barrett-Jackson does for collectible cars, Haddaway said.
Interested buyers must provide a $75,000 cashier’s check to an attorney to bid on the Lyes’ home at auction. The check is returned if they’re not successful, or applied to a 10 percent nonrefundable deposit if they win.
At auctions like this one, buyers must agree to pay cash and close within 30 days. Beforehand, those rules don’t apply, with “all terms negotiable,” Haddaway said.
“Prior to auction it will simply be a gross offer,” he said. “The seller will have the right to accept, reject or counter pre-auction offers only.”
Notable properties Elite has sold throughout the country include the massive penthouse in Baltimore where thriller author Tom Clancy lived and the former mansion of retired Major League Baseball player Mark Teixeira (nicknamed “Tex”) in Dallas.