Auction Results Offer Christmas Cheer For Local Property Market

10 December 2011

Osborne King's second auction this autumn attracted large numbers of interested buyers from across Northern Ireland keen to acquire a diverse mix of commercial and residential property ranging in value from £10,000 to £175,000.  The Osborne King auction team successfully disposed of 19 of the 23 lots featured in an auction catalogue that included office investment properties, residential development land, agricultural land and buildings in addition to several three and four-bedroom houses.

While the majority of properties sold for their maximum reserve prices, one of the auction lots comprising agricultural lands and buildings located in close proximity to Lisburn comfortably exceeding its maximum reserve price of £75,000 with the successful bid reaching £131,000.  One of the lowest-priced properties, a town-centre development opportunity in Kilkeel with planning permission for five apartments, exceeded its maximum reserve of £10,000 with a final sales price of £16,500.

Although delighted with results on the day, Mark Carron, Head of Osborne King's Auction team, acknowledged that overall sales figures were below those achieved in the company's previous auction back in September saying: "Despite the fact that our last auction was so successful, we had no illusions regarding how difficult if not impossible it would be to replicate that success. That said, we are happy with achieving an overall sales figure of 83% today, which demonstrates clearly that in addition to pricing properties at realistic levels from the outset, our policy of stating maximum reserve prices as opposed to guide prices means that people have confidence in actually being able to bid on and secure properties on the day.  As far as we are concerned, the most appealing characteristics of an auction are transparency, openness and certainty. We're not in the business of selling lots provisionally on the day - when we say, "sold", we mean "sold", which is not always the case, particularly with regard to recent auctions elsewhere. We are not interested in luring people into the room under false pretences and for this reason, we will always state the maximum reserve price so that we don't confuse and possibly alienate the very people who wish to buy on the day and are in a position to do so."

Encouraged by today's results and committed fully towards maintaining their involvement in the auction process, the Osborne King Auction Team is preparing for its first auction of 2012, which is scheduled for the 8th of March with closing date for entries by the 1st of February 2012.

www.osborneking.com/auction.asp

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