UNIQUE CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE GIVES MAYS STUDENTS INSIGHT INTO REAL ESTATE LAW

BY LAUREN BARBIER

"I didn't know people did auctions for millions of dollars over the phone on properties they'd never actually
been to."
-Heath Cover

"Going once. Going twice. Sold!" boomed the voice, as 18 students listened intently for the next item up for bid.

This isn't an upscale auction house in New York or a $1,000-a-plate charity dinner. In fact, these graduate students are in a classroom in the Wehner Building on the Texas A&M University campus. But on this fall day, they are not listening to a lecture or frantically copying notes.

Rather, they are observing the live telephone auction of several of Consolidated Freightways' more than 200 properties. The freight shipping company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2002 and was forced to dispose of its U.S. properties.

Consolidated Freightways opted to conduct monthly auctions, listing the properties on a special Web site. The site included pictures, assessed property values and provided environmental site assessments. After establishing the minimum bid in advance, buyers would bid on properties via conference call on the day of the auction.

Mays students in Ed Elmore's graduate real estate law class had the unique opportunity of witnessing the auction proceedings. This is one of the many non-traditional learning activities Elmore has incorporated into the classroom during his 21 years at Mays.

"I think students were able to hear the voice inflections of the bidders and get some sense of the excitement generated by the bidding," says Elmore, a senior lecturer in the Department of Finance and vice president of Hoelscher, Lipsey & Elmore Attorneys-at-Law. "This gives them a chance to get their feet wet in something they might be doing when they leave A&M. They gain good insight from a real-world experience."

Students participated in the auction using one of the distance learning rooms in the Wehner Building. The phone was connected to large speakers, while television monitors displayed pictures of the properties.

Elmore also gave students a chance to put their research and assessment knowledge into practice. Student participants selected a property, researched the site's assessed value, and attempted to guess the price at which the property would sell, based on the previous month's auction, Elmore explains.

"When a property would come up for bid we'd pull it up on the monitors so everyone could see," he says. "The students would write their estimated bids on the board so all participants could compare them with the actual bid prices."

Mays student Heath Cover, who is working on a master's degree in land economics and real estate, says he gained a new perspective on buying real estate.

"The guy would say 'Going, going,' and right before 'Gone!' someone would throw out another bid," he says. "I had never experienced an auction before, so this was a chance to learn something new. I didn't know people did auctions for millions of dollars over the phone on properties they'd never actually been to."

Cover believes the more opportunities students have to witness real-world situations such as this, the more they learn. "Anything out of the ordinary classroom experience is good," he says. "It's more realistic, so it has an extra element of interest." @