Once, twice, three times to sell

Auctions are the gift that can keep on giving. Damien Cooley says selling under the hammer gives your home three times more charm than selling via private treaty.

“With every other method of sale you’ve got one chance of selling. If you put a price on it you’ve only got one chance. The buyer is going to make you an offer and it’s going to be sold,” Cooley says, adding that a cooling off period could also put an offer in jeopardy.

“And if you’re selling with an EOI campaign everybody puts in their expression of interest, you choose the best. But with an auction you can sell the property at the auction, before the auction or after the auction. You’ve got three chances of selling it,” he says.

Cooley says the process also creates hype around a sale and therefore a buyer’s fear of missing out will motivate them to act – even before auction day.

“When there is significant interest in a property prior, you take it to auction. Even in a market where buyers choose to sit back and wait, an auction date brings the negotiation to a head and forces the hand of a buyer to make a decision,” he says.

Under private treaty there is no sense of urgency.

“The private treaty method can sometimes feel like an open-ended buyer appointment with no certainty as to when the property will sell,” Cooley says.

And even in a market like Sydney where clearance rates might be down from highs of around 80 per cent to a more modest 60 per cent, Cooley says there is no reason to throw in the towel on the auction process.

“The beauty of auctions is you just never know who will turn up and buy. In boom markets, we sell properties site unseen and to buyers that simply turn up on the day. Equally, in a normal market where auction clearance rates are between 50 to 60 per cent, just the process of going to auction and passing in a property often triggers the phone to ring with buyers ready to make a decision post auction,” he says.

And Cooley has crunched the numbers on just how healthy post auction sales currently are. According to Cooley Auctions’ August data (when the traditional clearance rate was 69 per cent) an additional 7 per cent of those properties put to auction sold within 14 days and 10 per cent sold within 28 days. As a result, the amended August clearance rate was actually 79 per cent including post auction sales.

“You just never really know what someone will pay until they’re in the auction environment and have competition. That’s the biggest upside of auctions. Capitalise on strong demand and in many cases it can result in a sale 20 per cent to 30 per cent above your dream price.”