Jessica and Bret Bender make the rough housing market work for them.
Marketing senior Jessica Bender and her brother Bret, a first-year education graduate student, founded an online property-auction company this summer for people seeking to buy a house at a low price in Chandler or Tempe.
Their company, RE Champ, allows customers to enter a housing auction for $79 and place bids once the auction opens.
Auctions last 48 hours and open when enough bidders have entered to cover the cost of the house.
Jessica Bender said that through the company a $250,000 home could sell for as low as $10,000. Because the combined fees of each bidder pay for the home, the seller makes the amount they ask for while the buyer has a chance at an inexpensive house.
“It’s crazy that no one has thought of this before,” she said. “It could possibly change the way real estate is done.”
Bender said she and her brother came up with the idea for RE Champ over the summer, but finding a way to revolutionize the home-buying process was frustrating.
Much of the difficulty came from coordinating the development of the Web site, REChamp.com, and finding a way to attract customers.
“I guess that’s always true with startups,” Jessica Bender said.
The idea for the company came from seeing the poor conditions of the economy and the toll it took on her parents, who both work in real estate.
Her father and his business partners felt the effects of the sinking housing market, and Bender said she sought a new way to deal with it.
“The market turned around, and people weren’t buying,” she said, so she and Bret needed a way to help both buyers and sellers reach their goals.
Jessica Bender bought her first house before she turned 20 because she said she learned that owning a home was a much better investment than renting.
She said the company is beneficial for people in a similar situation because they need no real estate agent or established credit.
She also said if a house closes at $25,000, “payment would be closer to a car payment than a house payment.”
To enter an auction, RE Champ only requires a person to meet the legal guidelines in the state of the property at auction. In Arizona, buyers must be at least 18 years old and mentally competent.
Bret Bender said running a business as a student is challenging because of the time constraints on both ends.
He took a year off after completing his undergraduate degree to work on the company, even though he has not studied business.
"I have a lot of experience with homes, but the whole business startup thing is pretty wild," Bret Bender said.
For the future, the Benders hope to improve their Web site and expand their geographic area.
“We’ll first get Arizona figured out and then move on,” he said.
