Savilles Auction Summary

[tommyboy]

Summary of auction today

is not 100% complete as had a few problems, but still a good set of data

Todays auction summary

Edited because I can not spell

Edited September 16, 2008 by tommyboy

[abharrisson]

Interessting quite a high percentage sold and the prices achieved seem well over estimate, although they always low ball these at auction... I suppose the last sold at price will be the real marker.

[Laura]

Thxs for the summary tommyboy

The solds are looking overpriced already

[hilltop]

Good data, thank you. A surprisingly successful sale for the auctioneers and a lot of money being found even in the present conditions. Given the reasonable assumption that the purchasers did not have mortgage finance already in place, where is the cash coming from? Even if few properties were being chased up beyond the guide price, there are still people out there prepared to throw an increasingly rare resource (cash) at a rapidly increasing one (vacent property). Can it continue?

[tinker]

Thxs for the summary tommyboy

The solds are looking overpriced already

Cute. Very subtle, Laura.

Good work tommyboy.

[CFarmer]

ex owner of 61B has taken a bit of a kicking over the years.. looks decidedly ex. BTL too

[terryturbojr]

I live around the corner from lot 79 and £125k is pretty cheap compared to anything I've seen sold around there.

[moonriver]

Thanks for your hard work there again Tommyboy.

seems quite a few solds there.

let's hope all those buyers have their finance in place...

on "Homes Under Hammer" today they had a couple of btl'ers, and they hadn't checked the auction paperwork properly, so turned out they didn't get their mortgage lined up on time, so ended up paying an extra £20,000 as demanded by the seller, because they were a day getting the money through ! They had to agree to this, when they realised they wouldn't complete in time, or else loose their deposit of £30,000.

[bearly hopeful]

Thanks, tommyboy, very interesting results.

A friends daughter , who happened to be a senior equities analyst at lehmans until yesterday, bought a house identical to the one in lot 3 in July last year for £400,000 . The area is called the "Apostles" and is suppossed to be one of the prime areas in SW20. As we can see a 25% haircut from last year suggests even the quality houses are feeling the pinch.

[terryturbojr]

I live around the corner from lot 79 and £125k is pretty cheap compared to anything I've seen sold around there.

Looking at it flat C of the same building sold for £160k a year back and the beeb regional prices has Hackney as a rare +10% for the last year still. Admittedly don't know if they're identical flats.

[swissy_fit]

Thanks, tommyboy, very interesting results.

A friends daughter , who happened to be a senior equities analyst at lehmans until yesterday, bought a house identical to the one in lot 3 in July last year for £400,000 . The area is called the "Apostles" and is suppossed to be one of the prime areas in SW20. As we can see a 25% haircut from last year suggests even the quality houses are feeling the pinch.

A 25% haircut isn't much when comparing a "normal" estate agent sale (I suppose it was?) in July 2007 with an auction sale for a house stated as requiring modernisation in September 2008.

For me, an auction price should be at least 10% less, modernisation is going to cost at least 10% as well, this leaves a difference of 5%.

I'm astonished the difference isn't more - to me this is evidence that prices in desirable areas are holding up, f*ck it! :angry:

[tommyboy]

Have these 2 tomorrow

266 lots in all, will see what sort of results we get

Wilmotts 130 lots

Bigwood Birmingham in Assoc 136 lots

[mikthe20]

I attended the savills auction as was in town and needed some cheering up so hoping to see some real bargains. Place was heaving when I arrived just after the start. I would say most of those actually bought were by professionals since a lot of the bidding was clearly from people who had bid at auctions before - landlords or developers. A few bought by owner occupiers (could tell by the yells or big sighs of relief they gave!), but in the minority. Very few repos, which was a surprise. Seem to be a lot of housing association sales for some reason. Not much bidding off the wall as far as I could tell but I was suspicious about some the "bidding" (I stood at the back on purpose). There were a few bargains but also some properties that were overbid. My conclusion from attending is that there are still a lot of people who don't realise that the party is over and there's a way to go yet.

A couple of questions as I can't work these out:

- Why are assured tenancies a good investment? - seem to get bid well at very low yields - I thought assured tenancies meant the rent never went up?

- Same for ground rents - some ground rents, especially in central London, went for yields of 1%-2% - why would anyone invest in that?

HTH.

[PropertyQuant]

Great work tommyboy, this gives me a summary that I can analyse in terms of what date this takes us back to, like I have been doing for the Barnard Marcus auctions. If you could produce one of these after every EI Group auction, that would be excellent.

[porca misèria]

- Why are assured tenancies a good investment? - seem to get bid well at very low yields - I thought assured tenancies meant the rent never went up?

- Same for ground rents - some ground rents, especially in central London, went for yields of 1%-2% - why would anyone invest in that?

HTH.

1. Not necessarily, and shorthold (did you mean assured shorthold?) is the type of tenancy you get in the private sector - which is pretty ruthless about only taking on good tenants.

2. Two answers.

- Leases expire, so freehold values grow over time.

- Freeholders of flats still have some pretty drastic feudal powers to extract money from leaseholders under the guise of building maintenance, management, etc. Thatcher tried to legislate against the worst abuses, but that got scuppered by vested interests, so the net result was honest freeholders selling up a no-longer-profitable asset to the mafia interests who could still make them pay. With the aid of their chum the local district judge, and that kind of thing.

Edited September 17, 2008 by niq