• On Wednesday sellers start promoting the sale through newspaper ads, signs, and other media. These say that the property will be awarded to the highest bidder following a two-day open house that weekend starting Saturday.
• The sellers set startlingly low starting prices.
• They have all open-house attendees sign in and place written bids on the sign-in sheet.
• Next they stage the round-robin bidding after the open house closes on Sunday, calling each person who penciled in a bid, and asking if they want to increase the bids. Although that may sound tedious, for most sellers it's very exciting.
• Repeat until there's but one bidder left.

The popularity of real estate auctions of all kinds is soaring. According to Dennis Cruz of the National Auctioneers Association, the number of residential auctions rose 8.4 percent in 2005, to sales worth $15 billion.