Learnings

I went to the property auctions this week as a learning exercise, and learn I did!

They had 29 properties on the books and about 24 went ahead at auction. I was mainly interested in three of them in my desired area. Mostly, I wanted to see how accurate the "guide price" really was.

The first eye-opener is that the auctioneer started the bidding well over the guide price, every single time. I imagined being a bidder thinking it was a circa 100k property, for example, and how annoyed you'd be when he opened the bidding at 120.

Anyway. A few got no bids at the opening bid, at which point he went backwards by 10 or 20 thousand and tried starting again. A couple had no bids, a few were passed in (finishing bid was below the reserve). The nicest surprise was that some of the properties actully went for less than the guide price including one flat I loved which had a guide of 35-40 and went for £39,500. Really encouraging news I have to say.

I'm almost considering my caravan a lost cause, but even so, I'm in a sort of uplifted mood, because although it's going to take aaaaages, buying a flat now actually seems a bit more doable. One day.