We, as a country, are going through a significant transition following the EU referendum. We have a new prime minister and chancellor. The road ahead for UK plc may be paved with gold, but it also might not be.
Absolute certainties are unknown. As good agents, we have to monitor and react to the market, allowing us to advise our clients to the best of our abilities (and intel) to ensure decisions are made based on knowledge, experience and expertise.
Last year, I wrote about technological advances aiding the auction process. I briefly touched upon my reliance on lifestyle apps such as Uber and Zipjet (which have revolutionised their markets) and how, as a market, we could learn a lot from them. I stand by my view that “we all need to act more like Uber, but with the knowledge of a cabbie”.
I do question, however, if I adopted my own Uber model and ran an auction, whether I’d be sufficiently equipped to advise my clients. Especially if we used a single medium such as the internet. Although I like to dine at Dans le Noir, I’m not so keen to try it on my clients – it’s a high-risk option.
Our 6 July auction was the first showing of the market since Brexit, and so naturally it attracted a lot of interest. Many in attendance had no intention of bringing their chequebooks, let alone signing them. Their interest was in the market sentiment: were people bidding? Were people buying?
In short to both – yes, they were. The Allsop commercial auction sold 86% of properties, raising £66.23m for our clients. Further, the two largest commercial auction houses raised a whopping £300m for clients in the eight weeks either side of the referendum. To put the cherry on an already sweet cake, this happened amid a backdrop of sensationalised negative journalism surrounding the commercial market.
In the lead up to the auction and with the country seemingly falling apart around us, I hit the phones. My colleagues and I are likely to have made or received in excess of a few thousand calls to buyers; we listened and we offered our words where appropriate. We ensured that come auction day, we were armed with the knowledge to be in a position to advise our clients properly, so that they weren’t dining blind, so to speak.
Fast-forwarding to the coal face, my role in the auction room is very heavily geared towards speaking with buyers. If you’ve ever bought from Allsop, it’s likely we’ve met. I usually ask a few questions of buyers, which gives a good indication as to what they’re thinking going forwards. We often digress and discuss other matters too and on auction day this time, we mostly discussed Brexit. On this front, most buyers told the same story: “Life goes on”, and that it does.
If we, as an auction house, were confined to the shackles of a single medium such as the internet, the story I tell above would be very different. We would not have met in the room. I am unlikely to know that flyingfrisbee123@coldmail.com is not refusing the next bid on offer because of Brexit; he’s not taking it because that extra bit he is being asked for is allocated to his daughter’s wedding. And you wouldn’t want to upset his daughter!
Although it is plain romanticism to suggest all parties either can or want to attend an auction to speak with me, I am not naïve. Often buyers are simply unable or don’t want to attend, and so alternative methods such as proxy, telephone and internet bidding should be offered to reach everyone regardless of circumstance.
In times like these, times where buyers and sellers alike have many unanswered questions, it is crucial to utilise a multi-channelled approach to auctioneering. This allows us to provide the right advice and achieve the right result for our clients. So pull up a chair, have a taste, and get involved – we’ll be dining with the lights on.
Ben Hodge is a senior surveyor at Allsop
