Selling You House At Auction

So you decided that you would sell your house and put it on the market, and then you sat back and waited for a buyer. You waited, a few weeks, which then turned into months, and now a year later you are still living in the same house. You did find a new home to move into, but as you could not sell your own property, you could not free up the finances to buy it so that fell through. So what can you do?

Well you can always put your house in an auction and sell it quickly. But that idea sends maybe people hiding for cover, as they have images of their house being sold for just a few hundred dollars. That is not what happens in real world property auctions though. In order to protect the price you put in a reserve. If that is not met then the property does not sell, it is as simple as that.

Now selling a property in an auction does mean that you will probably have to sell it at a lower price than you wanted, but then how do you know that a future buyer won’t haggle you down. If you end up in a position where you are desperate to move then you probably would accept any offer, and may end up worse off than if you had gone to auction in the first place. So you need to weigh up a number of variables before you decide whether to sell at auction or not.

One thing you must take note of before placing any property up for auction, is that the auctioneer will take a percentage cut of the total sale price. So when placing a reserve it is worth taking this into account. So how do you decide on a reserve price? Well it is the absolute minimum you will take for the property, if you do not think you can work that out then deduct 3% to 5%.

Whether your property meets the reserve or not will also depend on which auction house you use. For this you need to do a lot research and find out which auction house sells the most properties, and what the average price is. Also, you need to look into which days sell the most properties, maybe they have a day every month that out performs all of the others.

When you do decide to send your house to auction, and the day arrives when they will be bidding on it, then you will be a bag of nerves. So get there about an hour before the auction, and have a coffee somewhere nearby. Always stay at the back of the auction house, and do not make a noise or movement when your property is being bid on. If it meets the reserve then well done, you now have one less thing to worry about, and cash in your pocket. If it fails to meet the reserve then you can try auctioning it with one of the online services, or go back to using an agent.