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Property auctions can be a great place to pick up a 'bargain', whether you are looking for a home or an investment.

As well as being a quick and relatively hassle free way to buy a home, no driving around viewing endless houses, no negotiations, and no last minute fall through if the house sellers get a better offer, the auction process is easy. You simply look through the auction catalogue, find a property you like, arrange a viewing and do some research, and show up prepared on auction day.

However, buying at a property auction does require careful planning. Thousands of properties are sold

SDL Bigwood’s May auction got off to a flying start when the very first lot sold for 220 per cent of its guide price.

The Cottage, Spirehouse Lane, in Blackwell near Bromsgrove achieved £275,000 from a guide price of £125,000.

Gurpreet Bassi, partner and head of auctions Midlands, said that set the tone for the day in the 124 auction that totalled just under £9.2 million with a success rate of 85 per cent.

The auction saw 100 per cent of lots offered on behalf of Birmingham City Council sold and the story was the same for all of the lots offered on behalf of Solihull Metropolitan Borough

The main advantage of buying a property at auction is that you avoid the lengthy process of buying a house in the traditional way. At auction, the process happens in a matter of minutes rather than months and when the hammer falls, you own the property.

The other many benefits of buying property at auction are listed below. If these don't convince you, nothing will!
 

Low prices

Auctions really do offer the chance to secure property at bargain prices. Thousands of properties are sold at auction in the UK every year - and many are hard to value, meaning they often sell at below market value

A large apartment block will be auctioned in Derby early next month, along with dozens of houses, commercial property and prime land for development across the Midlands.

Spinney Lodge at Fauld Camp, Fauld, Tutbury near Burton on Trent is currently the largest property scheduled for the SDL Auctions Graham Penny Derbyshire auction on Thursday 8th June.

Spinney Lodge is a substantial, purpose-built apartment block currently containing five one-bedroomed and three two-bedroomed self-contained flats, with a *guide price of £395,000+.

The detached freehold property is in the small rural village of

Award-winning national property auctioneer Auction House has announced sales figures for the first quarter of this year which precisely match the record results achieved during the same period in 2016.

By the time the hammer came down in its final March auction of 2017, the group had sold a total of 701 properties - exactly equalling the total sold in the first quarter of last year, when the market was surging in advance of the additional 3% Stamp Duty for landlords and second-home buyers, which came into effect in April.

Commenting on the figures, Auction Manage Claire Blezard said: “Not only

AUCTION FINANCE is a great way for property developers to secure a below-market-value property, often from a motivated seller. It could even be suitable for first-time developers too, if you’ve got the right expectations from the beginning.

Putting up your hand and bidding on a property worth hundreds of thousands of pounds is a daunting prospect, even for experienced auction-goers. If you make the winning bid, you'll usually have to pay a non-refundable deposit on the day, and you'll have 28 days to pay the balance.

That means that the timeframe for auctions is much shorter than the

Award-winning property auctioneer Auction House is putting its increasing success rates down to its network of 40 regional sales rooms around the UK, each of which supports its own local area.

The group’s sales figures for April 2017 indicate a 74% success rate – a 2% jump compared to the same period last year – despite additional levels of uncertainty caused by Brexit and the forthcoming General Election.

Auction House Founding Director Roger Lake said: “Our 40 conveniently-located auction rooms around the country mean we attract bigger than average audiences compared to other auctioneers

The director of one of the country’s most respected land brokers is calling on planners, architects and builders to increase the amount of site sharing on new construction land across the UK.

Charles Hesse from Aston Mead Land & Planning says the idea of putting similar companies and organisations together on the same site would increase the amount of brownfield land available in town and village centres.

He explains: “Brownfield sites are the holy grail of new-build construction. Their accessible and central locations make them highly desirable, but they are often in short supply because

A two bedroom flat in Wembley with a remaining lease of just 18 years has sold for £140,000 – from a starting guide price of just £40,000, at last month’s sale (13 April 2017), through Auction House London.

Although the flat needed refurbishing, the advantage for the buyer of this property in Sylvia Court was that the freeholder had already been approached for an extension to the lease.

The property was one of 106 lots offered in the auction room at the London Marriot Hotel in Regent’s Park, where sales raised more than £13,600,000 (£13,635,600).
Another property which caught the imagination

Property asking prices have recovered from a Brexit blip, hitting an all-time high of £313,655 in April after rising 1.1 per cent month-to-month.

Property website Rightmove found average asking prices increased £3,547 from March, surpassing the previous peak of £310,471 reached in June 2016, at the time of the EU referendum.

According to Rightmove this increase has been driven by strong buyer demand with the market seeing the highest number of sales agreed at this time of year since 2007, pre-credit crunch.

The average national asking price has now reached £313,000, and while the rate of