Home Buyers Find Auction Price Is Right : Real estate: Resolution Trust Corp. puts Antelope Valley residences up for sale with bids starting at $79,900.

Darrell and Annette Trojan were looking for a bargain--and they got one with the flash of a card.

In need of a bigger house for their four children, the Lancaster couple joined about 100 other people Sunday at the Antelope Valley Inn to bid on 23 new residences held by the federal Resolution Trust Corp.

Like many of the others, the Trojans were lured to the auction by prices that were as much as a third below the original asking prices of $140,000 to $188,000. On Sunday, the bidding began at $79,900.

“We came to get a deal,” Darrell Trojan, 32, said.

There were plenty.

The houses, part of the half-completed New Horizons tract in Lancaster, were built between 1988 and this year, and ranged in size from 1,600 square feet to 3,100 square feet. The Resolution Trust Corp., a federal agency that liquidates the properties of troubled financial institutions, took over the development for Atlantic Financial Savings in 1991.

“This is your chance to get something for nodding,” auctioneer David Kaufman told the crowd.

The Trojans sat nervously in the front row, at the far right end under a screen displaying slides of each house as it came up to bid. The couple arrived early--about 90 minutes before the auction--to get seats up front so they could watch their fellow bidders, and future neighbors.

They knew what they wanted. Their house was in a group of three, which would be bid on all at once. The top bidder would choose first, then the secondary bidder. The remaining house would go back to bid.

Bids came in quick succession, giving bidders an adrenal surge.

Bids climbed from $80,000 to $100,000 within seconds.

Then $120,000.

Then $125,000.

The Trojans dropped out somewhere between $120,000 and $125,000.

“Too high,” Darrell Trojan said, shrugging.

The top bid was $130,000.

“We didn’t expect it to go that fast,” Trojan said, looking slightly stunned and a little disappointed.

The top bidder chose a five-bedroom, three-bath house with a loft. The secondary bidder chose a six-bedroom, three-bath place just around the corner.

“We’re still in,” Annette Trojan, 31, said, pointing excitedly with her pen to a line in the bidder’s information package.

Neither of the top bidders chose the house the Trojans really wanted. That one, a four-bedroom, three-bath place with a three-car garage, was next.

Again, the bidding jumped in a minute to $120,000.

Someone in the back of the room bid $125,000, the Trojans’ limit.

A hurried debate in whispers followed as the couple made in a split second the kind of decision that usually gets hashed out over a few days.

“What’s $126,000?” bid assistant Wayne Mangan asked. “It’s an extra 75 cents a month.”

Trojan hesitated. His wife told him no. They had, after all, discussed just this sort of situation before the auction. A limit was a limit.

“Tell them about the gold in the back yard,” auctioneer Kaufman said, jumping seamlessly back into his frantic mantra: “126? 126? 126? . . . “

Trojan hesitantly raised his card, bidder number 2109.

“Yes!” Mangan shouted, thrusting his fist in the air and spinning on his heel.

“Oh,” Kaufman said, “there’s no gold.”

Seconds later, the gavel fell. The Trojans had a new home.

“That’s the one we wanted,” Annette Trojan said as an auction employee led the couple to the financing room, where the more mundane task of filling out forms and crunching numbers waited.

Perhaps just as well.

“We were scared to death,” Darrell Trojan added. “But it was exciting.”