In This Guide
Apply for a mortgage
Buying at auction
1. Introduction
2. Pre-auction preparation
3. On auction day
4. Bidding tips
Buying in Scotland
Conveyancing
Find and view
Negotiate
Plan your purchase
Success and failure
Surveys and valuations
To buy or not to buy
Buying at auction
Bidding tips
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Here are some tips to help you bid for property at an auction:
- If you feel like the bidding process will be a bit too much
for your blood pressure to handle, why not take along a sensible,
ice cool friend of yours to do it on your behalf. You may be
able to get your solicitor to go along and bid for you, but
you will of course have to pay him for his time, whilst a friend
will hopefully not charge you.
- Before you start, or preferably before you turn up, set yourself
a top limit, which you absolutely under no circumstances positively
will truly definitely not exceed. If you break it once you might
just keep on going as you get carried away, so it is important
to be disciplined about things.
- Don't worry about the sitcom-scenes of inadvertently bidding
by way of a nervous twitch or yawn. Auctioneers will be looking
for a clear hand signal from you, and if they are in any doubt
they will usually ask. If you do get a touch of the Basil Fawlty
and make a bid by mistake, tell the auctioneer immediately.
- Assuming that a property gets some bids, the asking price
usually rises in increments of £5000. When this amount is too
much to add to the value, the increment drops to £1000 and so
on until there are no more bids.
- You can make a verbal bid for a different amount than the
next increment just by speaking when you make your hand signal,
so there is usually nothing stopping you from being childish
and offering one hundred thousand and one pound, for instance,
though watch you don't get tongue tied and offer one hundred
and one thousand pounds instead.
- The auctioneer will usually make some indication when the
reserve price has been met. This figure is not available to
the public before the auction. He makes the fact known by announcing
that the "property is on the market" which you may feel you
knew already, or that "I am here to sell" which might not surprise
you knowing that he is an auctioneer.
- The sale of a particular property will be brought to a close
with something like the well known "going once, going twice,
going three time" then a minuscule pause before the hammer raps
down to signify that the lot has been sold.
- Don't be disappointed if you don't get the property that you
were after. You are not likely to be the only one to spot a
bargain and in any competitive bid, at least one person has
to lose out. There will be other days.
- If you do miss out on the property you were intending to buy, don't make a rash bid for another property. Getting carried away in the heat of the auction room without doing your research properly could end up meaning you buy a real bombshell of a property for a price that is unrealistically high.
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