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 of buyers was a first floor studio flat in Clapton, which measured just ten square metres.
The property in Saratoga Road has a kitchenette as part of the layout in the main room with the only separate room being the shower room. For investors it can command a rent of £800pcm – giving a yield of 8.5% per year. It started with a guide price of £65,000 and interest in the room quickly sent the bidding to over £100,000 with the hammer finally coming down at £103,500.
Jay Howard from Auction House London said, “Despite market fluctuations, property auctions are still producing good value for sellers. Land, with or without planning permission is proving an excellent buy and the first time buyer property market is looking particularly promising at the moment.”
He added, “Auction sales are holding up well compared to a year ago, with the figures indicating that auction is the first property sector to re-establish itself back to the sales levels we saw before the EU referendum in 2016. No longer are auctions a ‘last resort’ route to market. In fact, they are now becoming the ‘go-to’ place to sell properties for improvement or development, various types of land, anything that’s mixed-use, blocks or rows of garages, or any property which is tenanted - both residential and commercial.”