Property auction market will remain strong

Permalink: Property auction market will remain strong
by Kay Murchie

Chris Coleman-Smith, auctioneer director at Savills, maintains that the UK’s property auction market will remain strong.

Savills is optimistic that auctions will always generate interest in spite of the credit squeeze and a fall in the number of properties sold at auction.

The number of properties sold at auction fell by 9.9% annually in February, according to a recent report from the Essential Information Group.

Mr Coleman-Smith believes there will always be a market for property auctions, particularly as the market can adjust so quickly. We’ve been through these times before. You go back to 1989-1991 and think how did we sell anything then? But we did, he explained.

Auctions are here and they always will be, good or bad times, there’s always a market there, concluded Mr Coleman-Smith.

Last month, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) said the number of properties sold at auction hit a 3-year low.

Rics also maintain that going to auction is still a popular method of sale, with 15% more residential properties being offered for auction in 2007 than the previous year.

Earlier this year, Allsop the residential property auctioneer, said repossessed homes were hitting high levels. Gary Murphy of Allsop said conditions like this haven‘t been seen since the early 1990s.

Late last year, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) warned repossessions would jump 50% to levels not seen since the early 1990s housing slump. The CML said it expected 45,000 repossessions in 2008 - up from 30,000 in 2007.