May 26-June 1, 2005

cityspace

On the Block

by Doron Taussig

In his 60 years on this earth, Robert Coyle Sr. has sold a lot of things, including hot dogs, pizzas, water ice and his services as a truck and bus driver. Over the course of this summer, he'll be selling off more than 300 Philadelphia properties — the great bulk of them in the Fishtown and Port Richmond areas — in a series of property auctions at the Hyatt Regency Penn's Landing.

Coyle, a native of Kensington and Allegheny avenues, is the sort of man who likes to make clear that his success is a product of hard work and sacrifice. He started out in real estate in 1985, shortly after being laid off from his job as a truck driver. First, he sold houses for someone else's company — "I was working 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he says. "I slept maybe two hours a day."

Eventually, he took over a brokerage company and, in 1992, began to buy up properties. At one point he held 425 homes in the Philadelphia region, mostly in the 19125 and 19134 ZIP codes — the area where he was born and raised. The properties he still has will be sold in eight auctions, to be held throughout the summer.

John Brown of Express Auction, the company conducting the sales, says auctions of this size are uncommon. "Usually property sales are in groupings of 20 to 30 properties," he says. Still, the scene will look like any auction: An auctioneer will display a photo of the property on a screen, read a brief description and start the bidding — which will begin with the price of the first bid. The homes have a wide range of values (anywhere from $45,000 to $350,000, according to Coyle), and Brown says that "the market itself will decide" their prices. He expects many of the buyers to be large investment companies, but has also received interest from individual buyers and current renters. The first auction was scheduled for Tuesday, May 24. The next one is tentatively planned for June 22, at the Hyatt, at 6:30 p.m.

Coyle is quick to dismiss the suggestion that he's selling now because the market is at a high point. "I want to take advantage of the huge appreciation of the properties over the last four years," he says. "I want to pay off some of my debts, establish a trust fund for my grandkids."

It's nice to own 300 townhomes in Philadelphia. But Coyle has decided to take the advice of another real estate magnate: "Like Donald Trump used to say, cash is king. I want to see how much money I can get."