Phoenix Commercial, Residential Sites Set for Public Auction

By Tonie Auer, Southwest Correspondent
Commercial Property News
Dec 28, 2007

Parcels from one of the largest nonprofit bankruptcy filings in U.S. history will hit the auction block on Jan. 17 when Southwest Real Estate Auctioneers sells the remaining land from the Baptist Foundation of Arizona Liquidation Trust in Phoenix. The remaining real estate parcels (pictured) from the BFA Liquidation Trust will be sold at public auction – to the highest and final bidders, Southwest Real Estate Auctioneers Vice President Glenn P. Munson told CPN. At one time the Baptist Foundation of Arizona controlled a portfolio of more than $500 million in holdings. In 1999, the Arizona Corporation Commission’s Securities Division found evidence that the foundation’s officers used fraudulent transactions in the last decade to conceal real estate losses. Also cited were poor investment decisions, deceptive accounting and a high overhead. That resulted in bad information about the condition of the BFA when talking to potential investors. According to the Associated Press, the Baptist Foundation of Arizona was created in 1948 as a nonprofit religious entity to raise money for Southern Baptist causes. The organization collapsed in 1999 in what was then the largest nonprofit bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. About 11,000 investors lost almost $600 million as a result, according to the AP information. As a part of the ensuing bankruptcy case, the BFA Liquidation Trust was created to convert the assets and allow for the settlement to the investors. Southwest Real Estate Auctioneers of Phoenix was retained by the BFA Liquidation Trust to conduct the auction event at which their properties and a few other select parcels located throughout Maricopa County will be sold at the Phoenix Sheraton Crescent Hotel.

Under the liquidation plan, the foundation has been selling its assets include real estate projects, land, golf courses and businesses, which were valued at about $240 million, according to a Feb. 18, 2000, article in the Arizona Republic. "This auction will include parcels from the BFA trust plus additional properties," Munson noted. "We've got everything from 40-acre tracts in western Maricopa County outside of Phoenix to 10-acre horse properties in north Scottsdale. On the second day, we have a 6,000-square-foot estate home and compound with several guest homes included."== The Baptist Foundation properties are being sold absolute, which means that whatever the high bid, that is what they’re going for, Munson said. "There is property along the commercial corridor including an opportunity on Baseline Road that is currently used as a landscape nursery on a high traffic area," Munson added. == Southwest Real Estate Auctioneers has done business in Arizona and the Southwestern region of the United States for more than 18 years. Southwest Real Estate Auctioneers was a strategic partner with one of the nine approved auction companies utilized by the Resolution Trust Corporation (R.T.C.) in the late eighties and early nineties in the sale of properties nationwide.