It's better that you publicly stated that you are selling rather than selling it without the user knowing what's happening on behind.
As long as I remember this is the 2nd time for the owner put the site in an auction/for sale. They did the same thing previously but after several period of time, they decided to cancel it. The reason they said on the first auction is that there is sudden demise of the team member. Now they do it again, probably they think that the site is not getting enough traffic and they have limited funds to promote/advertise the site so they decide to put it into auction again. I'm not really sure if there will be potential buyer, but I think there will be some people who will be interested to buy if the price is reasonable enough.
Only the owners can tell why they are selling the site however do you have the evidence or link which showed that they tried to sale the site before also ?
Demise of a team member does not look a valid reason to sell the business.