The autumn season started at full volume. In the week of 7 to 13 September, 2,642 lots were offered across the UK, two and a half times the 1,072 of the week before and the highest weekly count since this series began. The median guide price fell from £140,000 to £99,000, the first time it has dropped below six figures, and half of all lots were guided under £100,000.
One day did most of the work. Thursday 10 September saw 1,496 lots offered, more than the whole of the previous week: Future Property Auctions ran its autumn Scottish catalogue (602 lots), Barnard Marcus held its London sale (263), Bond Wolfe offered 189 in the Midlands and Sutton Kersh 108 in Liverpool. Wednesday added 558 lots, led by Auction House’s regional catalogues (327) and Cottons in Birmingham (44).
The week in numbers
- 2,642 lots offered at auction across the UK, up from 1,072 the week before and the most in this series so far
- £99,000 median guide price, down from £140,000
- 50% of lots guided under £100,000
- The £100,000 to £250,000 band held 35% of lots, and 11% sat between £250,000 and £500,000
- 98 lots carried guides above £500,000, of which 6 were £1 million or more
This is the regional residential market at full stretch. Future Property Auctions, Auction House, Bond Wolfe and Sutton Kersh between them account for well over half the week’s lots, and their catalogues are built on sub-£100,000 flats, terraces and refurbishment projects. Only 4% of guided lots sat above £500,000, against 7% the week before, which is the straightforward reading of a median that fell by £41,000 while the count more than doubled.
The week’s biggest lots
The top of the market was thin, and unusually spread out:
- The largest guide of the week was £1.98 million, for a plot of land of nearly ten hectares at Dowrieburn Cottages, Laurencekirk in Aberdeenshire, offered through Future Property Auctions on Thursday 10 September. The same catalogue guided 120 Irvine Road, Largs, a 34-unit building on the Ayrshire coast, at £1.1 million.
- The next two largest lots came not from auction houses but from high-street agents: Cambridge Street, London SW1V through Hamptons at £1.25 million, and Kingswood Road, London SE20 through Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward at £1.2 million.
- Barnard Marcus led the auction-house lots in London with 17 Wren Avenue, NW2 at £1 million and 104 Hodford Road, NW11 at £900,000.
- Two lots were guided at £990,000: Strettons offered 29 North Street, Tillingham, Southminster on Thursday, and The Auction Group offered Upperton Farmhouse, 2 Enys Road, Eastbourne on Wednesday.
By location, Birmingham narrowly beat London, with over 110 lots each, followed by Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester and Bradford.
Coming up
The record will not stand for long. The next seven days have 3,268 lots scheduled at a median guide of £125,000, and the top of the market returns with them: 195 lots are guided above £500,000 and 54 at £1 million or more, more than the last three weeks combined. The rooms to watch:
- Savills: 296 lots on 15 September, its largest catalogue of the autumn so far
- Allsop: 280 lots in its residential sale on 17 September
- McHugh & Co: around 380 lots across sales on 16 and 17 September
- Pattinson: around 560 lots across daily sales, with 140 on 16 September and 129 on 18 September
- Under The Hammer: 153 lots on 16 September
- Auction House: around 190 lots across its regional sales, and Butters John Bee opens the week with 99 lots on Monday 14 September
By location, London is back on top with around 260 lots, followed by Bristol, Stoke-on-Trent, Blackpool, Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester and Liverpool.
Worth knowing: conditional and unconditional auctions are not the same sale
Two of this week’s biggest lots, the Cambridge Street and Kingswood Road properties above, were marketed by high-street estate agents rather than auction houses. Agent-marketed lots are often sold by conditional auction, the “modern method of auction”, though the format is set by the individual listing rather than by who is marketing it.
In a traditional unconditional auction, the fall of the hammer is the exchange of contracts: you pay a deposit of typically 10% on the day and complete within about 28 days. In a conditional auction the winning bid buys you an exclusivity period instead, commonly 56 days, in which to exchange and complete in the ordinary way. To secure that period you pay a reservation fee or deposit, often a percentage of the price subject to a minimum of several thousand pounds.
The terms of that sum are where conditional auctions differ from each other, not only from the traditional room. Whether it counts towards the purchase price, and whether any of it is refundable if the seller withdraws, varies between providers, as does the point at which the clock starts: iamsold’s 56 days, for example, run from when the buyer’s solicitor receives the draft contract pack, not from the winning bid. All of it is set out in the reservation agreement, the conditions of sale and the legal pack. Read them, or have them reviewed, before you decide which kind of auction you are bidding in.
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 (2,637 of 2,642 this week).
