RESIDENTIAL
Savills leads resi auction sales
Savills raised more money on residential lots than any other auction house in the first half of 2015, generating £8m more than its total for this time last year.
Receipts were £214.1m – around £20m more than those of its next nearest rival, Allsop, and a 3.7% increase on 2014, according to Essential Information Group figures.
Savills director Paul Mooney attributed the auction house’s success partly to an “absolutely insatiable appetite” for freehold houses costing less than £1m in and around London, and to a good supply of properties priced more than £2m to £3m.
Gary Murphy, head of Allsop’s residential auctions, agreed it was a “strong sellers’ market”. There was “a lot of frustration among buyers that they [were] having to fight hard”, he said.
Allsop held three sales in the period, offering 765 lots, compared with Savills, which held four, offering 706 lots.
Total residential volumes were broadly in line with the total at H1 2014.
Among the top 15, Auction House London enjoyed the highest average success rate, at 88.9%.
Across all 637 residential auctions, the average lot size was £145,916, and the success rate was 74.7%.
*(All = figs from all branches and businesses)
* Includes figures from all branches and businesses
COMMERCIAL
Commercial sales fall after ‘unusual 2014’
Commercial sales slid by 12% in the first six months of the year, with totals dropping to £387m.
But there was a stand-out -performer in the league, with Lambert Smith Hampton seeing its totals rise by 21.5% to £23.7m. Its figures were boosted by the acquisition of BTWShiells in summer 2014.
Allsop retained its spot at number one, with a sales total of £176.4m, although this was down by 15.3% on H1 2014.
Duncan Moir, head of Allsop’s commercial auctions business, said 2014 had been an unusual year owing to “optimism as the recession eased, and an improving banking climate”.
Contrasting H1 2015 with H1 2013 totals shows a 9% improvement and is a “more valid comparison,” he added.
Its success rate of 89.6% in the first half of this year was comfortably ahead of the commercial average of 85.3%.
Holding second place was Acuitus, which closed the gap to Allsop with a 10.7% increase in sales to £114.8m.
The average lot size in the 21 auctions included in EIG’s figures was £348,302.
REGIONAL
Wales leads in regional sales growth
Wales saw the greatest increase in totals raised during the first half of 2015, according to a regional analysis by Essential Information Group.
The region’s leading auctioneer Paul Fosh Auctions raised £11.7m in H1, up by 37% on the same period in 2014, when £8.5m
was raised.
The second biggest mover was the East Midlands, with Graham Penny selling more than £19m of lots, up by a third on a year earlier.
London led the way in terms of value, with Savills selling £214m of residential lots, up from £206.5m last year.
TOP 12 AUCTION HOUSES
First half boost for A&R
Andrews & Robertson has raised almost 40% more from its sales so far this year, boosting it to ninth in EIG’s top auction houses league.
The London-based auction house sold £52.7m of lots in H1 2015, up from £37.8m during the same period in 2014. It was one of six auctioneers that recorded double-digit increases in total, with Iam-Sold and Clive Emson also producing strong figures.
Savills was top of the league with £214m of sales, with Allsop residential and Allsop commercial taking second and third places respectively. Allsop commercial held the highest success rate of the 12 at 89.6%.
TOTAL MARKETS
Figures fall for H1 auctions
A drop in lots offered coupled with a marginal drop in success rates saw total auction sales drop to £1.9bn during the first six months of 2015.
EIG’s figures for the total auctions market reveal a 6% drop in lots offered to 15,604, down from 16,600 in H1 2014. Lots sold dropped by 7.3% to 11,791 resulting in a success rate of 75.6%.
