BankOwnedBids.com, the first Michigan-based online auction site for foreclosed and bank-owned properties, launched Wednesday with a party at an Indian Village home featured on the site.

The site features properties at a variety of price points and locations. For example, a four-bedroom, one-bath bungalow in Detroit has a starting bid of $60 while a four-bedroom, 2-bath brick colonial in Novi starts at $149,940. The Indian Village home has nine bedrooms and more than 5,000 square feet with an opening price of $200,000.

Kent Colpaert, the broker/owner of Bearing Group and Bearing Group REO in Grosse Pointe Park, said he decided to launch the site to keep up with the huge volume of real estate owned by banks, or REOs, in our market.

Michigan had 55,801 bank repossessions in 2008, according to RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, Calif.-based foreclosure Web site.

Colpaert started working in the bank-owned slice of the market in 2001. The first 100 properties on the auction site are his listings, but he hopes to host other brokers' foreclosure listings as well in monthly online auctions.

In the past, when he had a client who wanted to auction properties, he had to sell it through one of the national auction companies. Those companies would handle the online auction, but the local marketing of the properties fell to the agents.

"We figured we could do that same business here with local people," he said. "We have so many buyers and investors interested in these properties."

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