Prices set at the “wrong” levels led to lower-than-usual totals at MS Auctions’ latest sale.
The event raised £1.3m – its lowest total this year – and generated a 59% success rate.
Auctioneer Felix Rigg said: “I like to see 70%-plus, and if we don’t get that, I’m not ecstatic.”
He said the success rate reflected “the stock we had and the pricing forced upon us”.
Any property can be sold at a price, he added, so “if it doesn’t sell, it’s generally because the pricing is wrong”.
Rigg also expressed “intense surprise” that several residential investments, including the first lot, failed to hit their reserves. The final bid on a two-room leasehold flat in Forest Gate, E7, was £109,000; it is available at £110,000.
Ten people had downloaded legal packs for the property, which has a £9,000 pa income and 82 years left on the lease.
Overall, 17 lots were offered, slightly down on MS Auctions’ usual range of 20-40 lots.
Rigg expects a “rush” of investment properties to come to auction ahead of the reduction of mortgage interest tax relief for buy-to-let investors to the basic rate of income tax, currently 20%. Chancellor George Osborne said he would phase in the changes from 2017.
• The latest Essential Information Group figures show a slight dip in the number of properties coming to auction, with 4% fewer residential and 2% fewer commercial lots offered in the three-month period to August. But the data also showed rising sale rates and a 9% quarterly gain in the total raised, to £980m.
