Success stories

Inside Story: 35 Armstrong Crescent, Holt

This month we wanted to unwrap the details of our recent auction campaign in Holt, we think it is a great case study to illustrate the importance of knowing the buyers and having an in-team auctioneer.

Our sellers came to us as they were looking at making a offer on another property but ended up needing to sell 1st so time was on the essence. Their bank had done a valuation on the place for their house at $550,000. After the pre-market preparations including some minor maintenance work, we recommended a guide price of “From $525,000”.

During the campaign, we had a strong buyer interest from multiple parties, so we increased the price to “From $550,000” and the sellers then set their reserve just a touch over that figure.

Auction day came and the opening bid was $400,000, quickly moving to $555,000 after 14 bids with 3 of the 4 registered bidders getting involved. Mark called it 3 times and there were no further bids, so at that point many auctioneers would have sold it right then and have been quite happy that they had done a good job.

However, Mark recognised that one of the bidders who had seen the property 4 times and had discussed a pre-auction bid were playing it cool (almost too cool) had not yet placed a bid. Mark directly asked them to place a bid and accordingly they placed their next bid at 570k, a 15k jump. It then took another 11 bids between the top 2 parties to end at $605,000. Even at that point, well over reserve, Mark spent almost 2 minutes trying to get another bid from the underbidder, and only when he had exhausted every dollar, did he sell it. The seller achieved a price almost $50,000 over reserve thanks to their trust in our skills and systems.

Watch the video on our YouTube channel here