Online auctions as a means for selling seized property assets

Sodia Capital Management, the property market arm of Apollo Global Management, is looking forward to the modernization of the instrument for online auctions in a way that will turn it into another channel for property transactions.

The company has undertaken the management of the Jupiter portfolio of properties that Apollo recently acquired from Alpha Bank for 337 million euros and which includes nonperforming corporate loans secured against properties. This portfolio concerns requirements of 1 billion euros and includes 1,756 properties from mortgages with a total value of 543 million euros.

The package has 637 residential properties, 288 commercial ones such as offices, stores and warehouses, as well as 89 hotels that constituted collateral for loans issued to some 300 borrower-entrepreneurs.

From the last quarter of 2019 to date, a number of properties have already been sold, fetching Sodia revenues of 11 million euros. The most important of these is a 2,300-square meter office building on Kifissias Avenue, north of the center of Athens, which was bought by a foreign institutional investor for 6.3 million euros. An 800 sq.m. store in the center of Rethymno on Crete has also been sold for 1.3 million euros, as well as a three-story industrial property of 2,100 sq.m. in Athens for 1.2 million euros.

The company is currently preparing for the completion by end-2020 of the management of mortgage loans it has in its possession, and for the sale of properties that come under its ownership in the most profitable way.

A Sodia official tells Kathimerini that “we are placing an emphasis on borrower-friendly solutions, either through the voluntary delivery of the properties or via a procedure of consent, providing for example for the supply of authorizations by the borrowers so that we can proceed with the sale of the asset on their account in return for the write-off of their dues.” Sodia has also installed a customer relations management system as well as a property management mechanism to optimize the procedure.

The focus of Sodia’s strategy is on highlighting auctions as an efficient instrument for the sale of properties – far more than today – proceeding at first with the creation of an online platform for advertising the properties and the auctions.