Artelligence for July 23, 2018

“What are the odds of finding a de Kooning in a storage unit?” The New York Post has an improbable story. Six unsigned works that  look like 1970s canvases by Willem de Kooning were found by the owner of a gallery that holds bi-monthly auctions. David Killen discovered the works when he emptied the contents of a storage locker he bought from the executors of an art restorer’s estate. If these works were to be accepted as de Koonings, they’re not major works. But these small abstracts from the 1970s have been doing well on the market lately (which only makes their discovery a little too on the nose, as they say):

• “But when he started to load the paintings from the Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ, locker in his truck, he was blown away. “I see these huge boxes that say de Kooning on them,” he said. “What are the odds of finding a de Kooning in a storage unit? It’s unheard of!” Killen ended up finding six total paintings that he’s confident are by the abstract expressionist, along with a nice bonus — a painting he believes to be by Swiss-born modernist Paul Klee.” …

Invaluable Sold $193.7m in 2018 So Far: Invaluable, the live auction platform that knits together a wide-range of auction houses, had strong sales the last three months, according to the firm’s latest release.

• Live auction sales on the Invaluable platform totaled $193.7m, up over 29%
• The number of lots sold increased by 25%
• The number of unique buyers on Invaluable climbed 21%
• Invaluable.com tallied 18 million visits, up 30%
• Visits by mobile device users jumped 43% – to 6.3 million

What Happened When Regulators Clamped Down on Real Estate Deals Through Shell Companies: The Miami Herald looks at a study of what happened when FinCen required shell companies making all-cash real estate deals to report the beneficial owner of the shell companies to the Federal government. Even though that information isn’t made public and is only used to make sure the shell company isn’t being used to launder money or by a person on a watch list, the use of these shell companies fell by 70%, the study said. But that didn’t stop the money from flowing in to real estate.

• “Despite the flight of shell companies, the bottom didn’t drop out of Miami-Dade’s residential real estate market: Overall sales didn’t budge much, although prices rose less rapidly than would otherwise be expected, the study found. South Florida Realtors say they haven’t noticed a change in buyer behavior. “If anything, I’ve seen an increase in cash purchases,” said Jay Parker, CEO of Douglas Elliman Real Estate Florida. That suggests buyers who previously used shell companies to remain anonymous may have found new ways to buy properties, an effect known as “substitution,” the study’s authors believe.” …