buying at auction - any advice please

[splodger]

i've bought plenty - from auctions (not land or property)
ringing - ( and inflating bids - as described above) used to be common place - but that is not so prevelant nowadays
best advice - read the legal pack - and have a very good look at what you want to buy - at an auction - it's certainly buyer beware

[Wendelspanswick]

When bought our woods it was an 'offers around' which progressed to 'best offer' where we were disappointed to find we were the under bidders. Six months latter the agents came back to us to say the sale had fallen through as the prospective purchaser had not met the requirements of the seller and were we still interested.
The woods became ours for the price we had put in as the under bidder.

[Wendelspanswick]

i've bought plenty - from auctions (not land or property)
ringing - ( and inflating bids - as described above) used to be common place - but that is not so prevelant nowadays
best advice - read the legal pack - and have a very good look at what you want to buy - at an auction - it's certainly buyer beware

Ringing is where groups of buyers collude not to bid against each other and is illegal, its different to 'off the wall' bids which auctioneers use to push the price up and is legal.

[smojo]

I used to work for an auction house and have witnessed many times the auctioneer taking bids 'off the wall' to drive the price up when a buyer is keen. The auctioneers would quite often brag how they pushed up the price by taking imaginary bids, really easy to do in a crowded auction room and quite legal.

That is despicable. Thanks for the warning. What would they have done if the real bidder dropped out and the "wall" was the winning bidder? I guess the lesson here is find a position at the back of the room so you can see the rest of the bidders easily.

[oldclaypaws]

I arranged to sell a rare piece of Saxon stone sculpture at Sotheby's which went for over £200,000. It got a lot of media coverage as the elderly owner, who owned it, had been using it for years to mark the grave of her pet cat- with no idea of what it was or the value. Bidders all lurked at the back, nobody wanted to start, so they told me the first couple of bids were made by the portrait in the corner, which is apparently a regular and enthusiastic bidder !

[Meadowcopse]

I got my field by private sale half an hour after the auction ended due to an auctioneers off the wall bid.
I suspected only one genuine bidder and left him and the auctioneer to it and it got to my limit anyway.
The hammer fell and "I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen, but that property has not been sold at that price, anybody remaining interested come and se us at the table after the other sales..."

I had spent a couple of weeks digesting the legal pack and making notes and asking awkward questions - all reasonably satisfied, but being in a flood plain gave me a definite limit and nothing more.
The genuine bidder didn't know the land flooded and his wife dragged him away when the estate agent asked me why I hadn't bid and my answer was "Cash limit on usefulness of land in a field that floods from the river every year."

I do wonder how many folk buy places without looking at the full legal pack, access and surrounding boundaries and land?

I bought it for the same as the last genuine bid by the guy dragged away by his missus and less than the hammer-fall price. Because it was a private sale, the buying price never went in the sale reports in the local paper either.
Completion was 13 days later - would have been 10 if the vendor's solicitor had got a form faxed over on a Friday afternoon.

Fortunately my Father is a surveyor, so I knew what to look for and ask about in the sales pack and legal details. As the property was being auctioned, the searches had already been done buy the vendor. I also live reasonably near-by so know what it is like for river variations.
Legal fees were £250, my solicitor said he was embarrassed to charge it as I'd done most of the preparation work.