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2024 has been another great year for the Auction department at Robinson & Hall. Our aims for this year, in addition to continuing our growth trajectory, were to expand the team, develop new relationships with estate agents to introduce suitable property, and to try to make the process of both selling and buying at auction less intimidating and more accessible.
Our growth has continued, and, already with an auction to go, we have exceeded the number of lots offered in 2023 by 133 and the number sold by 115. The percentage of lots sold is 87%, with the expectation that after the December auction, we will have a 20% improvement over last year.
The lot which performed the best over the guide price in 2024, was a three-acre paddock at Felmersham, which sold for nearly six times the guide price.
The fastest selling lot in 2024 was a flat in Shortstown. Sold as a late lot for a desperate seller, it was sold for £71,000 more than his aborted sale and just 13 days after we were instructed to sell!
The team was expanded at the beginning of June with the appointment of Lee Jackson who joined us as an Auction Lister. As an ex-professional golfer and coach, Lee possesses a natural ability to connect with people, and he has started on the long journey of gaining a broad knowledge of property auctions extremely well. New relationships have been formed by David Howard, our Business Development Manager, that concluded with successful sales on introductions from agents in Towcester, Tring, High Wycombe and Wolverton.
To make the process of buying and selling through our auction more accessible, we took a critical look at our website. We decided to start from scratch to create a completely new site with useful guides and contacts for both buyers and sellers, and one that is just as easy to navigate on mobile devices as it is on a laptop or PC. This took much longer than we had originally anticipated as our ideas expanded, and we were undertaking this work in amongst our normal duties of appraising property, reporting to potential clients, building catalogues, hosting open-house viewings and holding our auction at the Delta Marriott Hotel in Milton Keynes every two months. We were finally ready to launch the new site at the start of November and we are delighted with the response from people using it.
If you would like to book a no obligation auction appraisal to find out if your land or property is suitable for auction, then please contact me.
Leading property auctioneer, Auction House Robinson & Hall, has applauded the resilience and ingenuity demonstrated throughout the sector over the last 18 months.
Charles Lovell, Head of Auction House Robinson & Hall, says that since the beginning of the pandemic, the industry has moved heaven and earth to continue to work for their sellers and buyers. This has involved embracing cutting edge technology which has powered the entire industry forward by at least five to ten years and has changed the way auctioneers conduct their businesses forever.
“As the pandemic begins to come under control and we are all getting used to living with Covid, we have since returned to the room to allow buyers the option to either bid in person or online.”
“Auction House has been in the vanguard of companies adapting to the new environment we all now live in, and by offering livestream and online auctions for the last 18 months has seen very impressive volumes of sales! We have offered 108 lots and sold 100 of them, a 93% success rate!”
As well as embracing new technology, we have learnt to be nimble on our feet and adapt to ever changing circumstances – for example days before our December auction in Milton Keynes, we were informed the hotel was to be used as a vaccine centre and that our booking was cancelled. Within hours a new venue had been booked and our database had been informed.
Charles added: “Auction House is one of many businesses across the country which has proved that it can rise to the challenge and become inventive and entrepreneurial. We should be proud of what has been achieved and look forward to the year ahead with confidence”.
The deadline to enter a lot into our next auction is Friday 28th January so don’t delay. To find out if your land or property is suitable, please contact 01234 362899 or email robinsonandhall@auctionhouse.co.uk
