Other communities have used auctions to fight condo bloat. Now it's Atlanta's turn.

The developer of Tribute Lofts, the contemporary condominium complex at Boulevard and Freedom Parkway, plans to auction 40 units June 22 at the Omni Hotel downtown. The event comes less than a year after Tribute Lofts opened.

"This is not a distress or foreclosure sale — it's simply a new way to market our homes," said Greg Wohl, who with his brother, Brian, developed Tribute Lofts. "The market is in a sort of paralysis. Our goal is to get the buyers off the fence."

He compared it to an art or car auction, but in this case the proceeds will pay off a construction loan.

Atlanta is awash in unsold condos. At last year's sales rate it would take about four years to exhaust the supply, according to Atlanta research firm Haddow & Co.

Tribute Lofts has 147 condos, 68 of which have sold, with four more under contract, Wohl said. Last summer, the Wohls said their project was 70 percent sold, but that included under-contract units that didn't close.

Auctioning a big block of condos is not unprecedented in Atlanta. In late 2006, 58 units at the View@Chastain were auctioned, some at a 45 percent discount.

That "wasn't a huge success," said David Tufts, founder of the Condo Store and now president of the Marketing Directors, another condo sales firm.

Accelerated Marketing Partners, based in Boston and Danville, Calif., will conduct the Tribute Lofts auction. It sold condos in Orlando and Jacksonville for Wood Partners, the company behind the delayed Trump Tower project in Midtown. Next week, Accelerated Marketing will auction condos in Arizona for Atlanta-based Trammell Crow Residential.

Jim Kau, assistant professor of real estate at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business, said an auction signals distress.

"When houses and condos are selling, you don't see auctions," Kau said. "It's usually a sign of desperation. The Atlanta market is completely overbuilt."

Condo prices probably will continue to tumble, he said, regardless of the auction. "I expect the same decline in Atlanta as prices in Miami," Kau said.

The minimum bids for the one- and two-bedroom units at Tribute Lofts represent steep discounts, ranging from 34 percent to 54.5 percent. Determined bidders, however, can quickly turn a screaming bargain into a modest deal.

In March, 30 units at Wood Partners' Solaire condo building in Orlando sold at auction for roughly 20 percent less than the original asking prices. That's the same discount some Atlanta condo buyers are getting now, Tufts said.

Solaire supposedly had sold out in a matter of weeks, but in fact 80 percent of the buyers were investors, many of whom walked away from their contracts. That left Wood Partners with dozens of units, some of which it decided to sell all at once to realize a quick profit.

The Solaire auction took 90 minutes and grossed just under $10 million. It took place in a falling market, so "from our standpoint, it went well," said Charles Barrus, a Wood Partners development director in Florida.

Tufts said the Tribute Lofts auction might trigger a pause in Atlanta's meager condo sales as prospective buyers wait to see what happens. If it goes well, he said, it might start a trend.

"A lot of eyes will be on it," Tufts said. "There's a lot of interest at selling at a higher velocity rate right now."