Having spent many hours selling at auctions in the North and the South, I find that although bidders in both regions behave similarly, there are a few regional differences.
I still recall my first-ever auction in Liverpool, for Sutton Kersh, back in 2006. I was down to the last two bidders on a particular lot and was encouraging a Liverpudlian builder to keep going.
I recall uttering the phrase “Come on, sir, it’s only money” – a line I had heard my mentor Gary Murphy deliver with aplomb time and time again in London.
Yet instead of the ripple of laughter I’d witnessed Gary receive when he said the line, stone-cold silence and steely glares greeted my effort. Fortunately, the auction itself was a success, being held before the financial crash, but my partner in Liverpool was quick to educate me afterwards that bidders in Liverpool don’t like to joke about money.
And so I learned a valuable lesson that day, which seems obvious now with hindsight. In Liverpool, the bidding increments may be the same, but their value relative to the current bid price of the lots is much higher, and extracting those additional bids is a bit tougher to do.
The only other issue for me has been my pronunciation of certain addresses. Having a London accent means that I pronounce Walton and Woolton exactly the same – but anyone from Merseyside will tell you they are two very different areas.
Fortunately, the occasional correction from an auction runner protects me against any claims of misdescription in my delivery.
Another question I’m often asked is whether a property located outside London would sell better in our London room or in one of our regional auction rooms. In both cases, the property would be marketed jointly by both auction teams, so it is just down to which room it will fare better in.
Obviously the vendor’s best interests will always govern any decision and, in my opinion, the answer is fairly straightforward. Although not everybody likes the notion, it is impossible to dispute the fact that London contains a far larger number of property developers and investors than any other part of the country.
If you are offering a property suitable for investment and want to place it in front of the largest audience possible to get the best price, then it will almost always fare better in our London room. Our attendance levels are in excess of 500 people each time, and we have catalogues with more than 100 properties every seven weeks.
So a seemingly cheap investment flat in the North of England with a strong yield will look attractive to our buyers, especially if that property is offered towards the end of the day, and there are a sea of buyers who have missed out on other stock that they came to bid on.
Furthermore, while a local audience may place more importance on the capital value of the asset itself, in London it is perfectly normal for a buyer to bid whimsically on a property that they deem to be cheap enough, as long as it shows a strong investment yield. We sell huge numbers of properties like this and often the winning bidder has not inspected the property or in some cases not even been to the town it is in.
We are seeing a growing trend in which vendors purchase vacant stock outside London, make the relevant improvements, let them on good yields and then offer them in our London room as ready-made investments to an audience with a huge appetite for these properties.
Of course, if a property is going to be of interest solely to owner-occupiers, then it should always be offered in a local auction room, where common sense dictates that a local audience of end users bidding against each other will almost certainly yield a better sale price.
We give our vendors the pros and cons of each option and let them decide. It is a tried-and-tested method that has worked well to date and hopefully will continue to do so.
Ultimately, buyers inside and outside London all want the same thing. Likewise with vendors.
Our job as auctioneers is to ensure that all parties are happy, irrespective of where they live, or which area the property is in.
Andrew Binstock is director and auctioneer, Auction House London
