Online Auction Advice

My mother in law sold her house by private treaty in the last week or two, and is looking to buy a place that is being sold by the online auction process. This is in caulfield victoria.

Has anyone purchased through the omline auction process?
Are there any tips?
Any methods to guess when another bidder is getting close to their limit?
Any bidding strategies anyone want to share?

 

It's a bit harder when you've got no gauge on how many bidders have registered or are online. You can't read their body language, see the hassling/encouragement from the agents etc.

How far off is the auction? Can you submit a pre-auction offer?

 

Its this saturday, they arent accepting pre auction offers, which probably implies they have a few interested parties.

 

Have been to a few online auctions in the past month.
Like every auction, have your upper limit in mind always.
True you cannot see the bidders, but I think that is a good thing given you dont have to deal with the poker faces, agressive bidders, whisperers, over the top actors.

 

@lixas4 - how did it go?

 

The house is an old double storey brick overlooking the caulfield racecourse. Apparently the SP Bookies used to use this house and others along the street in the olden days. And it turned out the vendor was an archibald winner. There were 11 registered bidders, so we were a little worried. But she got it. She really wanted it as we live around the corner. The price it sold for was probably a bit under the market of 3 months ago, but not a bargin.

She isnt very tech savvy and was quite nervous so i did the bidding for her. We used an agressive style of bidding. There were about 50 bids of 0.5k - 10k increments, our bids were generally 5 or 10k. The auction process is fairly easy with preset bid inputs that can be clicked on.

The auctioner is streamed with video and audio. The video cut out a number of times and at one stage we lost both video and audio for about 30 seconds. We didnt know if it was just us that cut out or everyone. Before hand we had the mobile numbers of the agents prepared for this occurrence, so called one to make sure the auction wasn't going to be finalised without us. It turned out everyone was cut not just us, so it continued when we all got connected again.

I did notice the third and final call draw out was a lot longer than normal. At an in person auction the second last bidder shakes their head and gives the auctioneer the 'im done' look. This cant be replicated in the online auction, so the auctioneer we had really drew it out. I think one of the agents might have called the second last bidder to confirm they were out as well. So it took quite a bit of time for the final call to come through.

It was the first time any of us had bid at an auction, it was quite fun, we all had the nervous energy running through us, and were pretty excited when she got it. Yeh, so it was a pretty good day.

 

So more gumtree than ebay

 

A few less tyre kickers.