House Selling by Auction; Experiences?

Old_Git

Tycho wrote: »

Where was that house located that it apparently lost so much value since 2005???

Belfast.......

Jaycee_Dove

We were persuaded by our estate agent to go to their auction arm for a 'quick sale'. They put the house on the open market first at a sale price of well over £100K and it got a couple of lower offers and one for the asking price that was withdrawn as they said it needed over £10K for updating.

Whilst we wanted a quick sale for family reasons this was very encouraging as we had had 12 viewings in 3 weeks and the offers as above. But we were convinced an auction could bring in even more and a bidding war and maximise the price.

Don't ever think this if you get told it.

The auctioneers insisted we had to guide price the house at £100 K (despite the recent offers being for more) to attract the right buyers.

Come auction we were told they had had ZERO interest and so we had to reserve price it even lower, well below the lowest price we were told to accept as a reserve by the agents.

The auction brought two bidders and the highest reached £90K. But we were not told this until after the bidder had left! We did consider accepting to cut our losses but when we authorised the auctioneers to do so the buyer said 'that offer was yesterday - now our offer is just £82K'.

Needless to say we had to say no thanks.

The auctioneers then apologised for not selling asked if we wanted to put it in their next auction, told us we would need to pay again and reduce the guide price to less than the previous auction.

Now our agents have to leave the price of our house at the auction price.

So we are worse off by looking for a quick sale. We are paying the agents over £3K, have had to pay the auctioneers as well and they achieved nothing for us.

It is still two months before we can get out of our £3K contract with the estate agents so we might well end up waiting longer to sell at a reasonable price - presumably via someone else - than if we had never dealt with the auction.

My advice - think very, very carefully about ever agreeing to this as a way to sell your house swiftly. It might work for you but it also might make you worse off and poorer.

harrys_dad

All the TV programmes like "Homes Under the Hammer" are about people buying at auction and making money. They never ever talk about those who are selling at auction and losing money. You always meet the buyers, you never meet the sellers.

Jaycee_Dove

In fact, we discovered that sometimes shows go to the auction, film the property that does unusually well (in reality most houses outside London do not sell or sell well below guide price).

Then they go back afterwards and shoot the house as if it is about to go to auction and they can follow its progress.

Presumably it would be too risky filming houses up front if half of them got no offers at the auction.