My brother who lives in Fredericksburg VA, passed away in September of 2015. I live 70 miles North of there in MD. As his last surviving relative, I was left alone with the task of emptying and selling the house. A friend of my brother's recommended Tammy Reid to me. After she explained the process they used to auction a house versus the standard method of using a real estate agent to sell it, I was intrigued. I knew there was a good possibility the house could sit on the market for many many months with a standard realtor. And every month my money was going out the door to pay the mortgage and the utilities on an empty house.

Nicholls Auction Marketing Group has a huge capacity to market a house heavily in a 30 day window.  They market to many websites, magazines, newspapers and the MLS realtor system. I quickly realized that an ordinary realtor could never market the house as widely as Tammy did including to a nationwide audience. I knew that that auction route was going to be the way I was going to get the most money possible for the house and get it sold most quickly. Tammy came to meet me and see the house in January of 2016, and thought they could have it on the market by February and we would be done. As it happened, there were many details involved with emptying the house, and I did not get that completed until July. Nonetheless, Tammy stayed in touch with me the whole time, and was always professional, courteous, friendly and mindful of the difficult loss I had just undergone. She was a tremendous resource of information for referrals and contacts for services that I needed to get the house empty and repaired enough to sell.

On several occasions she even handled interacting with local vendors for services so that I did not have to make a trip down to that house. She saved me much time and driving by her helpfulness and willingness to do anything that could reasonably be done by her to assist me. I could never pay her enough for the assistance and kindness that was always there through those six months while she was waiting for me to be ready to sell the house. She even provides a service of emptying the remaining contents of the house once the valuables had been removed or given away, and it is a very reasonably priced service at that. By myself, the task of emptying the house of the remaining belongings of my brother would have been overwhelming.

Tammy provided me with every detail about how the process of marketing and auctioning the house was going to work including giving me exactly what it would cost me and exactly how much they were charging the buyer. The good thing for me about the auction approach is it doesn't cost me anything to have them  auction the house. The buyer pays the 10% premium to Nicholls Auction. She marketed the house as promised heavily for 30 days and then they held the auction event. It was over in 10 minutes and I was able to listen to it on my phone so I did not have to be there in person. She also referred me to a closing Title Company that works with them regularly that was able to send me the paperwork to sign for closing by FedEx, so that I did not have to make another trip down to Fredericksburg just for the closing. I recommend the auction approach compared to using real estate agent to anyone, and I can recommend no one more highly to auction it for you than Tammy Reid. She was as much a friend as a business partner.

Many thanks Tammy!

Christopher Burke

— "As Much a Friend as a Business Partner"