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Why use auction to sell land?
25 August 2021

The short answer is to achieve the best price and to sell quickly.

Small parcels of land always attract buyers with dreams of gaining some sort of planning consent. Whilst some buyers will proceed with a purchase without planning consent, many will want a conditional contract and won’t complete until planning consent is gained. If the planning response is negative, that hopeful type of ‘buyer’ will evaporate but not without wasting money and time for the seller.

To avoid being let down, many sellers consider a private sale to a neighbour. The difficulty here is that other prospective buyers can be excluded from the sale process leaving the seller with people who think all paddock land is only worth ‘agricultural rates’, whatever they believe that to be.

At auction everyone has an equal and fair chance of being the successful buyer. This helps to attract people who are genuinely interested but otherwise would feel their chances of success are slim. It encourages these buyers to bid against each other, often achieving far more than either a private treaty or private sale would do.

Offers can still be made prior to the auction date. If an offer is accepted prior to the auction then the sale can still progress under an auction contract, with contracts exchanged on the acceptance of an offer and the full deposit paid. Once advised of this, those ‘hopeful’ people who wanted to ‘offer’ suddenly don’t, yet the serious buyers will remain engaged, free to bid on the lot to their very maximum, or at least more than any underbidder.

Click here to see examples of land that has sold at auction.

For more information or to book a no obligation auction appraisal, please contact 01234 362899 or email robinsonandhall@auctionhouse.co.uk

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