The first week of September was a quiet one. Across the UK 1,072 lots were offered, roughly half the 2,073 of the week before, while the median guide price rose from £120,000 to £140,000. Fewer sales ran, and the ones that did carried a heavier weighting of commercial and investment stock.
Wednesday 2 September was the day that mattered, with 593 lots offered: Auction House ran its regional catalogues (277 lots), Savills held its September sale (156 lots) and Venmore Auctions offered 42 lots on Merseyside. Thursday added 239 lots, led by Paul Fosh Auctions in Wales (109 lots) and Future Property Auctions in Scotland (53 lots). No other day of the week passed 130 lots.
The week in numbers
- 1,072 lots offered at auction across the UK, down from 2,073 the week before
- £140,000 median guide price, up from £120,000
- 35% of lots guided under £100,000
- The £100,000 to £250,000 band held 40% of lots, and 18% sat between £250,000 and £500,000
- 71 lots carried guides above £500,000, of which 12 were £1 million or more
The top end was proportionally larger than in the week before: 7% of guided lots sat above £500,000, against 3% in the busy final week of August. The most likely explanation is the mix rather than the market. Savills’ catalogue leans towards London, commercial investments and development sites, and with far fewer regional residential lots to dilute it, that weighting shows up across the whole distribution.
The week’s biggest lots
The largest guide of the week came from Scotland rather than London:
- Future Property Auctions guided 2 St Vincent Place, Glasgow G1, a city-centre building on one of Glasgow’s best-known commercial streets, at £2.9 million on Thursday 3 September.
- Savills’ sale on Wednesday 2 September carried the week’s run of seven-figure lots: Minton Place, Station Road, Swindon at £1.75 million, 1 The Pavement, Popes Lane, London W5 at £1.6 million, and Flats A and B, 73 Loughborough Park, Brixton at £1.255 million.
- The same catalogue ran to the country and the regions: Lakewood, The White Barn and land at Sandon, Buntingford at £1.25 million, Trinity House, Torwood Gardens Road, Torquay at £1.2 million, and a medical centre, Castlefields Surgery in Stafford, also at £1.2 million.
- Auction House’s largest lot was land adjacent to The Gables, Great Leighs, Chelmsford, guided at £1.15 million.
By location, London led the week with 120 lots, well ahead of Liverpool, Nottingham, Birmingham and Southampton.
Coming up
The quiet week is followed by the busiest yet. The next seven days have 2,642 lots scheduled at a median guide of £99,000, with around 1,500 of them on Thursday 10 September alone. The rooms to watch:
- Future Property Auctions: 602 lots on 10 September, its big autumn Scottish catalogue
- Auction House: around 550 lots across regional sales on 8, 9 and 10 September, with 327 on the Wednesday
- Barnard Marcus: 263 lots on 10 September, the largest London catalogue of the week
- Bond Wolfe: 189 lots on 10 September in the Midlands
- Sutton Kersh: 108 lots on 10 September in Liverpool
- Pattinson: around 120 lots across its daily sales, with Strettons (48) and Cottons (44) adding smaller London and Birmingham catalogues
By location, Birmingham tops the coming week with 122 lots, just ahead of London on 116, followed by Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds and Manchester.
Worth knowing: buying at auction in Scotland
With the week’s largest lot in Glasgow and the biggest catalogue of the coming week a Scottish one, it is worth knowing that the paperwork under a Scottish auction differs from its English equivalent, even though the fall of the hammer is binding in a traditional unconditional sale on either side of the border.
Title in Scotland comes from the Registers of Scotland rather than HM Land Registry. Most residential properties marketed for sale in Scotland require a Home Report, which includes a survey, an energy report and a property questionnaire, though there are exemptions for certain new and newly converted homes. There is no equivalent requirement in England. The conditions of sale are also a Scottish document, traditionally the articles of roup, and the concluded bargain runs under Scots law, which means instructing a solicitor qualified in Scotland rather than your usual English conveyancer.
Practically, that means the legal pack for a Scottish lot reads differently, and the questions to ask of it differ too. If you are used to English packs, have it reviewed by someone who knows which of those differences matter before you bid.
Data: aggregated by Aedifai from publicly listed auction lots across UK auction houses. Lot totals cover every listing; guide prices are as published by the auctioneers, and medians, bands and percentages cover only lots with a published guide (1,063 of 1,072 this week).
