<table> </table> If you&#8217;ve ever been to an estate or livestock sale, then you know how fast auctioneers move the merchandise.</p><p>Grandma&#8217;s fine china or the 4-H kid&#8217;s prized hog can change hands in an eyeblink. That&#8217;s how quickly the houses went at a foreclosure sale the other night at Bartle Hall.</p><p>Nearly 60 sold in two hours. Empty houses whose former occupants moved out after receiving an eviction notice &#8212; or the threat of one &#8212; when they couldn&#8217;t keep up with the mortgages.</p><p>Many went for half their estimated value or less.</p><p>&#8220;Opportunities are here!&#8221; Trent Ferris, an executive of the Real Estate Disposition Corp., called out from the stage. &#8220;It&#8217;s a perfect storm of opportunity!&#8221;</p><p>That storm: low prices, low interest rates and motivated sellers, as in the lenders that want to unload all the houses they&#8217;re stuck with. But mostly because the economy stinks and millions are out of work.</p><p>The bright spot in all this: Some people who couldn&#8217;t afford to own a home before now can.</p><p>People like Teresa Thomas and her boyfriend, Mike West, who were the successful bidders on property No. 1303, a three-bedroom, 1&#189;-bath ranch in south Kansas City that was last listed at $59,000.</p><p>They picked it up for just 35K.</p><p>&#8220;It was my second choice,&#8221; said Thomas, who lives in Belton. &#8220;I had seven on my list.&#8221;</p><p>Others were looking for investments.</p><p>Scott Brown of Leawood paid $19,000 for a house in Kansas City that he planned on making a rental.</p><p>Keith McLain of Blue Springs said he had his eye on one in Raytown that he had hoped his son could share with college roommates.</p><p>&#8220;It went too high,&#8221; he said as he strolled out of the hall early with the earnest money still in his pocket.</p><p>More than a couple of hundred potential homebuyers were there, I&#8217;d guess. Some told me they weren&#8217;t bidding, just checking it out for next time.</p><p>Plenty of others came with the $5,000 cashier&#8217;s checks that gave them the right to make bids.</p><p>It had the feel of a cattle sale in Hale Arena. Up on the screen would flash the photo of a house. Then the auctioneer would start babbling. Up would go hands in the audience.</p><p>&#8220;Yep!&#8221; one of the auctioneer&#8217;s three tuxedoed helpers would holler from the floor when a yellow bid card flashed.</p><p>&#8220;Haw!&#8221; another would bellow, jerking his arm back and crouching like an umpire calling a runner out at home.</p><p>All that noise and commotion was giving me a headache.</p><p>So I moseyed over to where the money changed hands, all the while wondering whether someone in the audience was there with a keener curiosity than most.</p><p>Perhaps to see how much the place they once called home would go for at a distress sale.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a very emotional thing,&#8221; said auction helper Jill Burke, who has worked dozens of these across the country.</p><p>&#8220;People cry who lost their homes, and others cry for joy. I had one lady, you would have thought someone had died.</p><p>&#8220;She just cried and cried and cried because she bought her dream home.&#8221;</p><p>Real Estate Disposition Corp. isn&#8217;t the only outfit holding these foreclosure sales. Even so, REDC said it sold 32,800 foreclosed homes at 300 auctions, amounting to $3.4 billion in real estate in 2008 alone.</p><p>That&#8217;s a whole lot of joy and a whole lot of heartache for one year, and 2009 looks to tug at the emotions even more.</p><p>The first quarter is not quite over, yet the company has already auctioned off 6,000 foreclosed homes nationwide for more than $600 million.</p><p>That&#8217;s what the guy meant when he said &#8220;it&#8217;s a perfect storm&#8221; for homebuyers.</p><p>As someone who knows folks who are in danger of losing their homes &#8212; and who doesn&#8217;t &#8212; that phrase always reminds me of the George Clooney movie about the shipwreck.</p><p>No, losing your home isn&#8217;t the same as drowning at sea. However, I imagine it feels like it.