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Brendan Wong
With the strong demand for auctions in markets such as Sydney and Melbourne, a leading group director is predicting there will be more agents embracing the auctioneering process.
CEO of Starr Partners Doug Driscoll said there would be a number of agencies that would look into conducting auctions directly without the services of a third party.
“I have long admired the Melbourne model, where they provide a holistic real estate service with the estate agent stage-managing the entire process,” he said.
“In stark contrast, in Sydney it’s quite unusual – there aren’t too many holistic operators in the market for whatever reason – but I think we will start to see that change.
“I am not saying that it’s going be an overwhelming trend – far from it – but I’m starting to see a few agents seriously look at it.”
Mr Driscoll said that while current standards of auctioneering services were very good, there were instances of auctioneers turning up late to auctions because they had crammed too many into a day, or lacked knowledge about the property on sale.
“With the market being as strong as it is, we are now starting to witness a lot of agents thinking ‘We can have a stab at it ourselves’, with the belief that this offers a better service for the client as they’ve got a more vested interest, and by having a closer attachment to the process they’ll hopefully extrapolate the best price,” he said.
“When you know a property as well as these agents do – because they’ve had a four to six week campaign leading up to it – that level of intimacy can sometimes be lacking in an auction process.”
Although Mr Driscoll believes there will be a noticeable uplift in the number of agents obtaining their auctioneering licence this year, he warns that it is not as easy as some agents perceive. “The role of an auctioneer is very specialised, so involving a third party is often the best option,” he said.
Auctioneer Will Hampson from My Auctioneer and CENTURY 21 Auction Services said in the first year of his company’s partnership with the network he had seen an increase in agents embracing the auction process.
“From the training we were doing with CENTURY 21 agents, we were seeing agents becoming more comfortable with the process. We did that on national level through webinars and through attending training sessions with the agents and working closely with the agents to hone their skills around the auction process, and now more agents are able to offer that option confidently to vendors in the marketplace and manage the auctions really well,” he said.
Mr Hampson said those agents that offered auctioneering services to a client would help them win more business than those who did not.
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