Questions to ask an auctioneer when trying to sell your house or flat in Wembley
One way to sell your Wembley home is using an auction, where people will place bids on your property and the highest price at the end of the auction is deemed the winner and the new owner of your house or flat. It’s a gamble selling this way because there’s no guarantee on the price at which the home will sell, or if it gets zero bids, in which case it is considered unsold.
Auctioning can take a long time, because there’s usually a wait of many weeks or more between the date on which you list the property for sale and when the auction occurs. If your home sells, there’s a further delay because the buyer will have on average 28 days to complete all of the required legal paperwork and other necessary steps in order to finalise their purchase.
You can also expect to pay auctioneers commission for selling your home. This fee will be taken out of the sale proceeds right away, which means that you’ll have to be prepared for a lower net profit. It’s possible you could have the auction house shift the burden of paying some of the fees on to the winning high bidder, which would help to potentially increase your net profit from the sale.
If you’re still curious about using an auctioneer it’s worth finding out more about individual companies before making a final decision. We have provided some sample questions below that you could call or email an auctioneer and ask, and we’ve also suggested what to look for in the answers you receive so that you can decide whether a company is a good match for you.
Some auctioneers only know how to sell certain properties, such as typical houses or flats, and they might not have any experience with finding buyers for what you’re trying to sell. If your property has a unique feature or potential problem like subsidence, asking this question can help you to learn whether an auctioneer might struggle to generate interest in it.
As detailed above, the typical auctioneer will give the winning high bidder about 28 days to complete all of their required steps to finalise the purchase. However, it’s worth asking this question, because some auction houses set much shorter deadlines for buyers, whilst others give more time – every company is different, so it’s important to clarify this issue with them.