For more than 30 years, real estate broker Rhett Winchell has run bidding wars for residential properties on behalf of homebuilders, lenders and even individual homeowners. This week, he’s taking bids on behalf of a more glamorous seller: HGTV.

President of Kennedy Wilson’s auction group in Beverly Hills, Winchell was hired by the home-improvement TV channel to market and sell four two-bedroom condos in Glendale. The condos, at 1119 Sonora Ave., were all recently renovated by contestants on “Flipping the Block” for the Knoxville, Tenn., channel. The show is expected to air in July.

Under state law, a licensed real estate agent has to be present during an auction such as the one being run for HGTV, so Winchell will be overseeing the process as Dean Cullum, senior auctioneer for Kennedy Wilson, calls the auction. The event is to take place May 17 in the ballroom at the Hilton Los Angeles North hotel in Glendale.

Bids for the homes, each about 960 square feet, will begin at $225,000 and go up in increments of at least $5,000. In March, 15 condos sold in Glendale’s 91201 ZIP code for a median-per-square-foot price of $429, implying the condos would be worth about $412,000 if they sold at the median price.

Prospective buyers must register for the auction beforehand and be preapproved for financing with an on-site lender. In order to bid, buyers must bring a cashier’s check for $5,000 that would go toward a 10 percent down payment on the home and a personal check to pay the balance.

Winchell said he and Cullum would run a practice auction a couple of days before the event to make sure bidders are comfortable with the process. He expects most will not only be first time auctiongoers, but first time homebuyers as well.

“The auctioneer will go at a relatively reasonable pace so everyone knows how much the bids are,” he said. “There’s a rhythm to it but not a lot of speed. We want the buyers to be educated and understand what they’re bidding.”

– Bethany Firnhaber