Ross Hawkins, Ray White Orakei
With a 25 year career in real estate, Ross has been carrying out auction campaigns for the past two decades.
What made you decide to start running auctions?
Auction is the most effective way to get residential property sold in a reasonable time frame and for maximum price. It’s fully transparent and by creating the competition in an auction situation other buyers have the comfort to bid when they see others doing it in the room or on site also.
How do you make them work for you?
We use the auction method in all markets and, even when buyer numbers are down, it is still a great way to get any unconditional buyers to focus on getting their ducks in a row and being ready on the day to do a deal.
What are the benefits for your clients/why should they take their properties to auction?
Historically we didn’t auction many of the higher value properties but in recent years there is no limit on the price points of properties we auction. This is great for our vendors as they become very clear very quickly just where they need to be on value to get their properties sold. It assists every bony in the process and even us as agents to truly understand the market value in any market conditions. Nothing worse than marketing a property for months and months with no result if we are all off the mark on value as it just wastes everyone’s valuable time.
What has been your best auction to date?
Recently I auctioned a property at 204 Remuera Road which was a 70s home on a corner site on Remuera’s golden mile. It had a current CV of $5.4 million and we had assessed value at circa $5 million, being very realistic as we always are. We told the vendors if there was more value there then by trusting the auction process it would deliver the best result. Bidding started around $3.5 million. It was the perfect auction with multiple bidders who were all very active from the start. We rapidly passed the reserve price. Before we knew it we were in the mid-$6 millions and more than $1 million above CV. Bidding continued between two bidders and we ended up selling the property for $7.1 million which was way above everyone’s expectation.
Media contacts:
Cassandra Glover
Senior Media Advisor
Ray White Group
+61 447 000 472
cglover@raywhite.com