I have always thought, and continue to believe, that tapping a keyboard can never replace the real and less sterile environment of talking.
A few, from non-auctioneering backgrounds, have tried – and failed – to hold online auctions rather than a “real” auction. Recently, we have seen those with an auction background holding internet-based sales, with a far greater degree of success.
Does the buzz of an auction room and skill of an auctioneer make a difference? If you believe it does, you will always want your property offered in a real auction.
There appears to be a generation gap emerging: those who text or type and those who talk.
When applying this to the market, I have concerns that an internet auction does not provide the arena that both sellers and buyers need and expect.
As auctioneers, we have a duty to obtain the best price for our sellers. We use a range of tactics and skills at the rostrum to achieve this and we know a good auctioneer can persuade and influence bidders to keep going, thus making a significant difference to our clients’ sale receipts.
Buyers also like the transparency of an auction room, which is evidenced by the amount of people who travel to our sales from across the country, when all in the industry offer the alternative to bid over the phone from either their home or place of work.
There are other factors an internet sale may not capitalise on that are picked up in a real auction.
For example, will the internet bidder try to buy a property online, lose out and therefore decide to bid on something else, thus avoiding a wasted day? Or will they simply log off and carry on with their day?
If we were to look at property only as a traded commodity, there could be a strong argument to sell everything online. The modern auction room, however, is nothing like pure commodity trading.
Far more factors will determine the behaviour and decisions bidders make in the room, and certainly the skill of the auctioneer should be able to influence these decisions to the benefit of their client – who is, after all, the person they are working for.
I believe there is a significant risk that a great deal of this will be lost through a sterile internet auction, much to the detriment of sellers offering their property through this method only.
That said, an internet auction is a lot less expensive than hiring costly venues. And the technology explosion has inevitably assisted us, allowing instant communication with a limitless audience; we all use web portals to promote our auction sales, provide legal documents, and so much more.
In September 1989 I joined Barnard Marcus Auctions, and the technology available then was a world apart from what we have in our business and personal lives today. The internet was still in its real infancy; even if you had an e-mail address, so few people also had one that it was not a viable form of communication.
I remember clearly David Sandeman of Essential Information Group (then Fax Wise) promoting a fantastic idea: faxing out auction results.
Of course, this would have been a great business if all except the most technologically advanced had a fax machine. But we can see today how David was right at the beginning of the curve.
Internet auctions are by no means a new phenomenon: one needs only to look at the success of eBay to see what can be achieved. But will this be a platform for property? Will the internet sale replace the “real” sale and thus add to the throngs of retired auctioneers roaming the country?
Certainly the average lot value would be far greater than the majority of items being offered on eBay, but lot value is not the only consideration. Classic cars and fine art sells at auction with many internet bidders, but generally still such items are sold in a real auction rather than only on the internet.
There are circumstances where an internet auction may be a viable alternative, especially where clients’ time scales do not fit the scheduled auction dates. For these reasons, at Barnard Marcus we are developing our online auction platform. But I do not foresee us as auctioneers being replaced by the web and hanging up our gavels for some time yet.
Chris Glenn is managing director of Barnard Marcus
