Rick Levin & Associates, Inc. (RLA) works with about two dozen professionals in the real estate auction industry who have conducted real estate and personal property auctions throughout the United States and several foreign countries. The firm specializes in designing effective marketing campaigns, including counseling sellers on the proper type of auction for their property, conducting bidder seminars, preparing press releases to obtain press coverage for the auction as an “event,” designing auction brochures and advertisements, showing properties, assembling information for Bidder Information Packages, auctioneers, ring personnel, and experienced telemarketing personnel to follow-up with interested prospects who have not yet viewed a property.
We have a support staff to handle incoming telephone inquiries, record the caller’s information, and provide timely processing of the requested information. The officers of the firm have been responsible for the sale of over hundreds of millions of dollars of real and personal property at auction.
The firm, in conjunction with VSE Corporation, has conducted seized and forfeited property auctions on behalf of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and other participating agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs & Border Protection, Immigration & Customs Enforcement, Internal Revenue Service, United States Secret Service, United States Coast Guard and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms.
The firm was founded in 1991. In the spring of 2007, RLA was awarded a contract to auction surplus real estate for the State of Illinois.
Mr. Levin is President of Rick Levin & Associates, Inc (RLA). He has been in the auction business since 1990. Mr. Levin is a licensed real estate broker in Illinois and a general member of the National Association of Realtors®, Illinois Association of Realtors®, National Auctioneer’s Association, and was also a member of the National Association of Realtors® Auction Committee.
Mr. Levin has experience in all phases of the auction business, ranging from a variety of real estate and personal property auctions, including vacant land; commercial office buildings; luxury single family homes; developer close-outs of homesites, townhomes, condominiums and single family homes, vacation properties; processing plants; and shopping centers to personal property auctions for antiques, aircraft, boats, memorabilia, numerous varieties of vehicles and heavy construction equipment. These sales have been conducted on behalf of a variety of clients, including the Internal Revenue Service, the Chicago Housing Authority, US Bankruptcy Trustees, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the US Army, Bank of America, Mcdonalds Restaurants, Harris Bank, Chase Bank, University of Chicago, state governmental departments, municipal corporations, local school boards, quasi-governmental organizations, non-profits, banks, institutional lenders, insurance companies, retailers, investment corporations, developers and individuals.
In 2000, Mr. Levin was appointed by the Governor of Illinois to sit on the Illinois Auction Advisory Board, a division of the Office of Banks and Real Estates, which oversees the administration of the Illinois Auction License Act. The License Act regulates the auctioneers who are licensed with the State of Illinois. Mr. Levin was also appointed in 2005 to the Advisory Board of the School of Real Estate at Roosevelt University in Chicago.
Mr. Levin graduated in 1986 from the School of Business of the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana with a business degree in marketing.