Cheering news from auction rooms
At its end-of-October sale, Auction House London raised more than £17 million. The mood among buyers was upbeat. When the hammer came down on the first lot at almost £100,000 above the guide price, cheers resounded through the saleroom. Auction House London had predicted the three-bedroom terraced property in Montagu Road, Edmonton would sell at £250,000. It went for £344,000.
Andrew Binstock, Auction House London auctioneer, says: “This was an exciting sale and the bidding was fierce from start to finish. It was a highly charged atmosphere and everyone clapped as the hammer came down — with one person even videoing the sale from start to finish.”
The buoyant mood stayed strong throughout the auction of 90 lots. Another highlight was a parcel of almost six acres of land in north Essex, with planning permission in place to build 49 properties. The land, on Thorpe Road, Clacton, started the auction with a guide price of £2.75 million, finally selling for £2.9 million.
In Mill Hill, north west London, a property on 0.5 acres needing refurbishment sold for £1.66 million against Sandpiper, Mill Hill: sold for £1.66 million (guide: £1.65 million) by Auction House London
a guide price of £1.65 million. Called Sandpiper, the five-bedroom modern house with pool and spa had been damaged by previous tenants.
Binstock says: “We seem to have gone over our sales blip in the summer, where this time a packed auction room of people intent on buying delivered the results we wanted. We had a good range of property — residential
and commercial — with an appetite for buying, to match.” Auction House London’s next sale will be on December 13.
Unusual lots are selling well — a sign of strong confidence among buyers. On the instruction of Severn Trent Water, Lambert Smith Hampton put seven former covered reservoir sites up for online auction in October.
Lambert Smith Hampton’s system
allows you to track the bidding by watching the webpage for each lot. The sites, in Gloucestershire and Leicestershire, are up to 1.1 acres in size and boast a variety of views of farmland and open countryside. They are close to village settlements. Guide prices were between £1,000 and £20,000. With one unsold, they went for prices from £38,000 to £231,000. EDITED BY CHARLIE JACOBY
Buyers of these sites do not have to be underground angling enthusiasts. Subject to planning permission, the reservoirs are suitable for conversion to all kinds of uses. All planning permissions sought on Severn Trent Water reservoir properties purchased in a similar online sale in 2016 were granted, including plans for a riding stable and for one- and two-storey dwellings.
The star lot was a reservoir on a 1.1acre site at Bottesford in Leicestershire. Bidding opened at £20,000 at 9.01am on October 4. Ten bidders fought it out all day, with the price reaching £105,000 by 11.25pm. Four new bidders entered the fray the following day and bidding was frenetic, with more than 70 bids placed in the last half-hour of the auction. One of the new bidders offered the finishing price of £231,000.
Lot sizes are increasing in both the residential and commercial sectors. Acuitus sold 23 lots for £1 million or more at its October sale, with an average lot size of £870,000. That auction has now raised £68 million, with a success rate of 86 per cent.
Richard Auterac, Acuitus auctioneer, says: “Investors are focusing on the income returns and asset management potential across all sectors of the commercial property market. There is a tremendous level of investor demand in the market at present.”