Courtesy of Fisher Auction Co.

The estate of Louis Pearlman, founder of the Backstreet Boys, is up for auction this weekend. AuctionServices.com, a Roanoke Valley Web company, is helping to market the property, which is expected to sell for between $5.5 million and $6.5 million.

Whether through a foreclosure or a regular sale, more people are turning to auctions to sell their homes, according to a Roanoke County Web design and hosting company specializing in the auction industry.

AuctionServices.com was founded in the Roanoke Valley in 1994, and it hosts more than 400 Web sites for auctioneers in the United States and Canada.

The company made news this week after its server became flooded with more than 100,000 visitors in a four-hour period on Tuesday, thanks to a high-dollar home listing posted to a blog by celebrity gossip writer Perez Hilton.

Hilton linked to a listing for the former mansion of Louis Pearlman, founder and promoter of the Backstreet Boys and other boy bands.

In the past year, an increasing number of foreclosed homes and nondistressed properties have been sold through auction sites hosted by AuctionServices.com, said marketing director Tammy Moore.

"It's a great way to sell your property, " she said. "You know the exact date that it's going to sell. There will be people there prepared to buy. They know they have financing in place. They know they can close the deal."

From 2003 to 2007, residential real estate had the highest sales growth through auctions compared with other kinds of sales, at 46.6 percent, according to the National Auctioneers Association. Land and agriculture real estate ranked behind residential, with 36.3 percent sales growth during those years.

"Real estate agents have discovered the opportunity that live auctions provide for quicker turnaround of property," states a report by the association.

AuctionServices.com also markets auction events. About 90 percent to 95 percent of its events are real estate related, including luxury homes, Moore said.

One of her company's clients is a Florida auctioneer, Fisher Auction Co. It is selling Pearlman's 16,000-square-foot home on Lake Butler in Windermere, Fla.

Pearlman faces 25 years in prison and $1 million or more in fines. He pleaded guilty Thursday to bank fraud, money laundering and conspiracy. His mansion in Florida is for sale by order of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The auction is Saturday.

During a few morning hours on Tuesday, after Hilton posted the listing, it received so much traffic that it overloaded AuctionServices.com's connections.

The company created a mirror site to compensate for the heavy congestion, Moore said.

Its servers never crashed or shut down.

"They just went in droves to that auction listing to see what all was going to be up for auction," she said.

The post received "several hundred requests per second," Moore added. "It was pretty exciting there for a while."

Pearlman's home is expected to sell for between $5.5 million and $6.5 million, said Lamar Fisher, president and chief executive officer of Fisher Auction.

Last year through bankruptcy court, a doctor had a contract to buy the home for $7.1 million, but the sale fell through, according to Fisher Auction.

AuctionServices.com, meanwhile, remains a relatively obscure company, with six employees and an office at Cave Spring Professional Center on Electric Road. Richard Romanus is its president, chief executive officer and founder.