Ben Stevens - Ray White Wellington City
Ben and his partner Amanda have been working in real estate since 2011, and are relative newcomers to the auction space. But since starting auctioning in February 2023, the duo have experienced enormous success.
What made you decide to start running auctions?
Wellington is a tender town. There are very few if any auctions run in the city. Post covid frenzy, Wellington experienced unprecedented price drops which carried on throughout 2022. Buyers stopped responding to tenders the way they always had for fear of overpaying. Where the lack of transparency has always been the superpower of tender, suddenly it was the method’s major disadvantage. At the request of a vendor, and after years of auction discussion with Ray White chief strategy officer (real estate) Mark McLeod, we agreed to run an auction. We couldn’t believe the way the buyers responded to the transparency of the method, and the result exceeded the reserve by $150,000 which was crazy in comparison with the results we were getting on everything else – if we could even get a result that is.
How do you make them work for you?
We run events weekly over summer and bi weekly over winter. This means there is always great energy in the room.
What are the benefits for your clients/why should they take their properties to auction?
With auctions we experience significantly better clearance rates and days on market. Trade Me have said the results of our team are far superior to the Wellington market average. They even had to check to see if the data was correct!
What has been your best auction to date?
The best auction was actually the first one we ran once we decided to move to this strategy in February 2023. It was for a high end lifestyle property. After a year of absolutely appalling results, zero competition, and low clearance rates, we had 19 registered bidders, a huge bidding war, and we set a suburb record. It was so exciting!
Media contacts:
Cassandra Glover
Senior Media Advisor
Ray White Group
+61 447 000 472
cglover@raywhite.com