Id never tried to use an Auction until this week. I believed that Auctions were open to anybody with property to sell. I believed that they would take property in any place and in any condition. I was very surprised then when the auctioneer said that he did not want my property in his auction. Before I go into why this happened lets rewind to the beginning.
I bought the property for a good price in the Spring of this year. I was a an ex-local Authority house which had been constructed in a non traditional way called REEMA construction. Due to this I had to buy the house cash and once this was done we set about repairing and upgrading the property. After a few months we had re-plastered, rewired, and upgraded the whole house. In went a four piece bathroom suite, utility room, and kitchen. The walls were painted magnolia and the carpets were cream. The biggest job had been the re-skinning of the whole house in brick to make the property mortgage able. The first problem with this house then struck.
To reward ourselves for the hard work me and the family had booked a holiday and decided to start the process to sell the house when we got back. On our return I drove across to the house and on opening the door found loads of handwritten notes and letters. I went further into the house and found that everything was sodden. It seems that while we were away a pipe in the house had busted. Not only had it leaked all over our house but it had got into next door as well. Due to their complaints and as the water board could not get into the property, the water for the whole street was cut off, and had been for the last week. Due to this we had to spend a couple more weeks making good the damage.
Once the property was ok again it was time to put it on the market for sale. We Instructed an Estate agent that was local and seemed to be confident in selling it. After 6 weeks they claimed to have us a buyer. As events were moving rather slow I contacted the buyer who informed me they were having problems getting a mortgage as the unusual build of the house combined with the fact she had credit problems made it hard to find a mortgage!!!!!! They eventually had to back out and I was not impressed with the estate agents choice of buyer who had supposedly been vetted? The second potential buyer was also a let down as when pressed about why they had not got a valuation done they told us they ere struggling getting together the deposit.
After all these let downs I decided to approach our local auctioneers to sell the property. I picked the phone up and started to tell the lady on the end of the phone that I wanted to sell my property through auction. Halfway through the lady said "excuse me" and then went on to order her lunch while she left me hanging on the phone. When she eventually cam back she said that there was nobody in to take details of the property and if I left my number the auctioneer would call me the next day. To his credit he did phone the next day. He asked for details of the property and the then went on to tell me that he did not want it in the auction. I asked why. Apparently it lacked the "p" of an auction property. I asked what the "p" was? Potential was his reply. All property in the auction needed to have potential and has I had improved it myself already it would not be suitable for the types that bought at auction. Needless to say we are still waiting for the agent to find a buyer and I have learnt a valuable lesson. That lesson is that if your house is nice and well looked after, property auctions may not be the way to sell it.
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