To be a great auctioneer, you have to do more than get over any fear of public speaking.
Harcourts Blue Fern Realty Henderson auctioneer Aaron Davis would know: he’s just taken out the 2019 REINZ National Real Estate Auctioneering Championships after two days of intense competition between 28 auctioneers.
Start your property search
Davis – who has been a finalist the past six years – is happy to share stats on his performance on his website. The first quarter of this year, he sold 40 per cent of properties under the hammer, another 20 percent immediately after and 10 percent were under offer.
This quarter, he says, there’s even more optimism in the market, which he puts down to good agents doing their thing.
“Quality property is still un-diminished,” he says. “People are more educated and now they’re attracted to the top performing agents who can navigate the market for them.
“When the market was hot, anyone could have sold anything. Not now. Success leaves clues.”
Davis is generous about why good agents are good – and why they are still keen on auctions, or committing vendors to naming a price at the outset. Not so much about agents using price by negotiation or waiting to see what prices would-be buyers might try (which he colourfully calls ‘milling around at the bottom’).
“A campaign is to sell, agencies have to put the energy into it, to build campaign excitement, to get people to come and look at my home.”
He says a new vendor coming into the market can figure out who the good agents are, by getting referrals but also observing how good they are at open homes, their presentation, even how they dress and how good they are at getting out information afterwards.
Despite all the good technology at buyer, seller and agent fingertips, Davis says real estate is still a people business and good operators don’t hide behind technology, they deal with people.
In his 20 years in the business, Davis has watched auctions used for selling the bottom of the market properties to now being the method for marketing the best properties. With that, he’s seen the craft and skills of auctioneers improve – in the past the path was via being an agent, now auctioneering has its own career path.
He credits chief judge Mark Sumich (he dubs him ‘the godfather’) with building enthusiasm for and for bringing through a generation of youngsters who see auctioneering as a good career path. This year Pippa Morris from Diocesan School for Girls in Auckland won the secondary schools’ competition, and Max Hart from Kerikeri High School was the runner up.
REINZ Chief Executive Bindi Norwell, says: “There is once again some great talent coming through the ranks and looks like we’ll continue to have a strong field of competitors moving forward.”
Chief judge Sumich lists some of the skills he expects now from an auctioneer: “The callers’ ability to cope with complicated albeit contrived bidding sequences, was testament to the training they are undertaking. Their often-casual output, with innovation and humour, belies an accuracy and competitive instinct which is off the radar. There appears little doubt that New Zealanders are providing the benchmark for calling across Australasia.”
To that, Davis adds the getting over the fear of dealing with what gets thrown at you in the heat of an auction. His advice to bidders is that they use the auctioneer as their ally (even, he reckons, go as far as standing near the auctioneer so that you can watch the competitive bidders) and throwing others off by jumping up in random numbers, no the usual multiples of five or ten. The auctioneer can keep up with the maths, other bidders not so well, he reckons. And never, ever, wait for the trial close, just bid until you’ve reached your max.
“Our job is to show what the market thinks the price is,” says Davis. “We give the vendor that, their decision is to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’”.
Davis and runner up Robert Tulp from Harcourts Cooper & Co (Hobsonville) will represent New Zealand at the Australasian auctioneering championships in October.
