Allsop and Acuitus are confident they weathered the storm of uncertainty in the run up to the EU referendum with the pair raising 12% more over the past two months than in the same period last year.
Acuitus chairman Richard Auterac said the UK’s two largest commercial auction houses had raised £300m over the past two months. He labelled the result the “most astonishing” he could remember in a jittery market.
“Most buyers chose to ignore what they were reading and chose to follow what they believed was the right thing,” said Auterac.
Despite the increase in activity, average net retail yields have softened slightly, pushing out to 8.2% in July, compared with 7.9% in the first half of 2016.
Essential Information Group figures show that Allsop and Acuitus offered a combined
243 lots and sold 197 at their most recent auctions, held
last week at the Park Lane Hotel and Radisson Blu, both W1, respectively.
Allsop’s success rate was 80% and Acuitus’ was 84%.
The majority of lots were outside of London and the South East. Allsop auctioneer Duncan Moir said anecdotally there had been an increase in the number of local buyers, possibly due to the regions’ more positive sentiment towards Brexit.
He said for some retail lots, “the bidding probably stopped a little earlier than it might have done eight months ago… investors are wanting a better rate of return for their money”.
Comparing July with the same period last year, receipts fell by around a fifth. However, Moir said the eight-week period from mid-May to mid-July was a more appropriate period to assess the impact of Brexit.
