Auction rooms were less full in 2022 but that doesn’t mean people weren’t watching them live online, including people from as far away as Tanzania, Botswana and Hungary.
Live auctions are finding a broad global audience since Covid lockdowns embedded the live streaming of auctions, says Murray Smith, auctioneer for Barfoot & Thompson, who has sought a bit of to-camera presentation advice from pal Rawdon Christie, the former journalist and Breakfast presenter who now works as a real estate agent at Barfoot & Thompson Remuera.
Smith says in the three months to the end of October 121,000 viewers tuned in to online auctions.
While the bulk were from New Zealand (114,000) around 3000 were from Australia and 2000 were from China.
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There were 400 viewers from Hong Kong and 380 from Hungary: “Believe it or not, Hungary, in that three-month period had more viewers than the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore,” says Smith.
Another 50 were located in Antigua and Barbuda in the West Indies, 15 viewers were in Jordan and there were five each in Tanzania and Botswana.
All up, people from 55 countries (excluding New Zealand) watched live auctions in those three months, Smith says.
While some of the overseas viewers could be expat Kiwis, Smith says it’s hard to know who is tuning in as only bidders have to register, but the turnout shows despite there being fewer people in auction rooms the appetite for viewing them has not abated.
“There’s no way in a three-month period pre-streaming times that we would have had our auctions viewed by 121,000 in three months – we’d have to have the auctions at Eden Park.”
Smith says physical auction rooms have been emptier this year not just because of the housing downturn but because people are still a bit Covid-wary of being too near to each other.
Auctioneers are having to present auctions a little differently since auctions have been live-streamed, too, and Smith is finding himself recognised a lot more.
“The big change we’ve had in the last two or three years is we’ve slightly gone from being auctioneers to TV presenters and I never thought 30 years ago when I started doing this I was ever going to be a TV presenter.
“I was at one of our office functions, one of these ones where they invite customers in and clients and so on, and this guy came over and he wanted to meet me because I was famous in Shanghai.”
The biggest challenge with the new system has been adjusting to not being able to read the room, he says.
“When you’re in a room full of people and you say something you get an instant response by the reaction those people have on their faces.”
The Auckland house that Barfoot & Thompson's Murray Smith sold under the hammer in 2021 for $9.9 million - a then record sum for auctions but one which has since been eclipsed. Photo / Supplied
A property at Matija Place, in Red Beach, Auckland, sold at auction in April this year for $5.9 million. Photo / Supplied
That doesn’t happen with online auctions.
“It’s a bit like a performer in some sense in a live situation. A comedian’s a great example.
“If people aren’t laughing at their jokes, then there’s something wrong with their jokes and with us if the words we’re saying in the auction room aren’t encouraging people to make another bid and have another go you know it instantly, but when you’re online you don’t know whether the words you’re using are having an impact on that bidder that’s watching online.”
Smith says he tries to look at the camera as if looking into the eye of the person watching at the other end.
He says overall auction results have been down this year, though. “This year we've had a lot of changes, we haven't sold as much, as in the success rate hasn't been as good.”
Last year (2021), the success rate was an easy 80 or 90% but in the last six months of 2022 the figure is around 60%, but Smith says analysis of the figures also shows people are still 32% more likely to get a result at auction than if selling by any other method.
He could not recall as many big sales as 2021, although he says there were still some strong sales.
In March 2021 he auctioned a property which smashed auction records, when number 31 Maungakiekie Avenue in Greenlane sold under the hammer for $9.9m (the record has since been eclipsed by an apartment in Remuera that sold for $12.77m at an auction called by Bayleys in October this year).
Smith thinks the highest price he fetched at auction in 2022 was the sale in April of 86 Matija Place, in Red Beach, which sold for $5.9m after a good battle at auction.
“It was a big development site and this was at a point when we thought development sites were fading,” he says. “It had a house on it but it was a big piece of land, 7900sq m, so that’s just a little under two acres.”
Sam Steele, lead auctioneer for Ray White, says in 2021 there was standing room only and queues out the door in auction rooms but in 2022 people had more space to sit down.
The market turned from frenzy to normal and while there was the odd empty room with no bidders, that’s also normal, he says.
“There's definitely been auctions where we haven't had any bidders (but) we also saw the same thing last year (2021) for particular properties where there was no one there so it really comes down to the individual property.”
The 2021 market was so unusually hot it was a market that may never be repeated, he says.
“It does certainly take a little bit of getting used to but properties are still selling, we're still seeing good bidder numbers and in my experience the market’s just gone back to normal and we've all forgotten what that's like.”
Crowds at a lunchtime auction held by Ray White Auckland Central in August this year. Photo / Fiona Goodall
Shane Cortese, national auctioneer for Harcourts, says in 2020 and 2021 auction numbers went through the roof but while some people were calling 2022 doom and gloom Harcourts were still well in advance of the total number of auctions called for 2019, before Covid.
“What we have found is buyers and sellers have had to adjust their expectations quite considerably based on last year (2021), which was a blimp in my opinion, you know, cheap money and fear of missing out really played a big part in perhaps increasing the bottom line perceptive price of a property going into this year (2022).
“Now we’re kind of getting back to where we perhaps would have been or should have been but it’s hard to take that adjustment when you see a CV or a rates demand based on those particular numbers which are just not there anymore.”
Properties selling under the hammer – of which there are plenty – are owned by people who are making the mental adjustment of where they need to be in the market.
Cortese says one of the themes of 2022 around the country has been buyers not knowing how much to pay, sellers not knowing how much their property is worth and everything being based on how much the bank is prepared to loan.
Auctions are a great way of finding out what the property is worth and either selling on the day or putting a price on which will drive people to the property.
