To Sell Mansions, Owners Turn to Auctions

Andrew Osinski felt the time had come to say goodbye to the waterfront home in Darien, Conn., that he had owned since 1994. His wife died eight years ago and his four children are grown up. So Osinski, a former managing director at Lehman Brothers, listed the five-bedroom, seven-bathroom property on Long Island Sound, which he bought for $1.52 million and then rebuilt, in May 2010 for $12.5 million. “After I listed the house last year, it quickly became stale,” says the 67-year-old former Wall Streeter. “I’ve been a trader all my life. There’s nothing worse than sitting on a stale position.”

To unload the property, Osinki turned to New York-based Concierge Auctions. The home, on which Osinki had a $5 million loan, eventually sold at auction for $8 million in June—at the low end of the range set by the company. “The market has changed,” Osinki says. “I asked too much, as we all do. I hung on for a long time. But this is it. It’s time to move on.”