Struggling department store chain Sears is selling 16 stores on the online auction site Real Insight Marketplace, which is working in partnership with commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield. The novel approach to selling stores is part of ongoing efforts by Sears Holdings to extract money from its real estate to protect its financial liquidity amid chronic and deep sales declines. The Sears stores are being marketed as sale and lease-back deals. While Sears has closed hundreds of stores in recent years, in many cases it has also simply sold a store and then leased it back to continue operating a store, or shrunk the space it occupies in a store and renting out the rest to a tenant. The stores being auctioned are for the most part connected to suburban malls and are located in Texas, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. Bids are due by 1 May 2018.