auctions good or bad

[stehouk]

few bad stories,winning bidders cheque bouncing and when chased up for money will not pay auction price but will buy at a reduced price, off the wall bidding this is just a con, owners have people bid for them.

I have bought cars at auction on a regular basis and the dealer part ex cars are usually good and there is a genuine reason for the sale at auction (to old or not of forecourt condition) so these can be genuine bargains, this is the idea of auctions to grab a bargain with a little bit of risk, it seems to me that property auctions are not a place for a bargain just somewhere for con men to offload there unsaleable properties.

the con men being the estate agents who cannot sell onthe open market because property is so poor.

I see another estate agent has just been heavily fined for not informing the customer that he was buying their property off them (at a reduced valuation) he has been warned before ,i have heard of this a few times.

I am looking to start a portfolio and at least i know who and where the con men operate .

[odecar]

I lost money in winning a bid but hadn't done my homework so lost the deposit. Expensive lesson but won't do it again.

www.investalist.co.uk is a good source as details the auctions everywhere.

Auction houses like Barnard Marcus / Allsops / Savills etc are big enough not to get up to tricks as they sell £20 million at an auction so why piss about over a property and its their reputation.

Smaller ones I would be cautious of but always do the homework and ask. www.rightmove.co.uk is a good place to see similar properties on sale and many places were advertised on there first anyway and in addition you can look at the sold prices since 2000 which will give an idea roughly what a place could be worth.

I have attended an auction where clearly someone was bidding up a property. I wasn't buying as had visited the properties they were unmortgageable. The propertys sold for 60% above guide price and were overvalued so someone got carried away.

Bottom line is do the legwork first.

[stehouk]

good advice ,like you say do your homework,but these auctions are just ripping people off,there are people that may have saved for a pension and had someone advise them to invest in property instead and may lose everything.

I have no time for estate agents i think they are very poor value for money, in a boom as witnessed a few times, houses were selling the same day so how can they charge the thousands that they do, and if a property does not sell they pester the seller to reduce the price or offer incentives,or send to auction they win all ways.

[odecar]

Its too easy to tar all agents with the same brush. There are crooks but the majority of people go to work each day to do a decent and honest job.

Its like saying that all landlords are scum who try and get tenants to live in unsafe places and care little about what happens.

We all know thats not true However we also know there will be landlords who do exactly this.

I use a local agent where I have now 2 BTL's in and they are good, honest and keep me informed.

They charge for it but I get what I pay for.