Is The Modern Method of Auction Any Good? [My Honest Verdict]

If your estate agent has just recommended the modern method of auction, you might be wondering if it's actually any good, or if you're about to get fleeced.

It's a fair question, and the sales pitch doesn't make it easy to get a straight answer.

I've been in the property industry since 2008, and I speak with sellers every week who've been offered modern auction. So here's the honest verdict.

The modern method of auction rarely delivers what it promises sellers. A typical sale takes around four months, the buyer's fee of 4 to 6% scares away most buyers, and all-in you can expect around 10 to 15% less than a good estate agent would get you. It suits very few sellers, and most have better options.

But there's more to it than that. If modern auction's been recommended to you, the next few minutes could save you a lot of money...

If you want to cut right to the chase and find out whether modern auction is right for you and your property, I've designed a free online quiz to help you answer that very question. It takes about 60 seconds and you get your results straight away.

Hit the button below to get started:

Still with me? Great. Then let's start with what modern auction actually is, because there's an enormous amount of confusion over this...

What the modern method of auction actually is

"Modern" auction makes it sound like the new, improved version of auctions. That's not really the case though. The name is just marketing speak.

You'll also see it called the modern method of auction, conditional auction, or MMoA. They all mean the same thing.

First, here's how it came to be...

Some clever property people looked at the market and thought:

• Auctions are fast, and sales don't fall through...
• ...but estate agents get you way more money...
• ...so let's build the best of both worlds.

Sounds like a great idea. So here's how they tried to make it happen:

At a traditional auction, when the hammer falls, the buyer is legally tied to the purchase. They must complete, usually within 28 days. No backing out.

For you as the seller, that's great for a fast, certain sale. But it means mortgage buyers can't really take part. (They might not get a mortgage in 28 days - or they might not get one at all.)

And it matters because mortgage buyers are the folks who pay the highest prices. (There are also the most of them.) This is why homes sell for so much less at traditional auction.

So modern auction came along and switched up two things:

1. It's less binding.
   The sale isn't legally exchanged. The buyer just pays a reservation fee. If they back out, they lose that fee, but there are no other consequences.
2. Buyers get more time.
   Usually 56 days to complete instead of 28. That's enough time to arrange a mortgage, so mortgage buyers can take part.

In theory, you get the speed and certainty of auction plus the higher price you'd get through an agent. That's the pitch.

But here's the problem: that reservation fee is high. High enough to scare most buyers away. And that one design choice quietly drops both your chance of selling and your price.

But we're years into the modern auction experiment now, so we don't have to argue about the theory. We can put it to the test.

What tests? Well, think about what you actually want when you sell a property:

• Speed.
• Certainty.
• Convenience.
• A good price.

So let's see how modern auction stacks up...

Test 1: Is the modern method of auction fast?

A typical modern method of auction sale takes around 3-4 months from start to finish. The advertised "56 days" only begins once a buyer has won the auction, and it sits on top of roughly four weeks of preparation and a month of marketing.

You'll often see these companies advertise "sell in just 56 days". Here's what's slightly disguised: that clock starts once you've found a buyer. It's only the last leg of the marathon.

Look at the whole process from the start:

1. Getting ready: around 4 weeks.
   You sign up, appoint a solicitor and get the legal pack built, including searches. Searches take time to come back.
2. Marketing: around a month.
   Your property is marketed in the run-up to the auction, so buyers can find it and come to view it.
3. Completion: 56 days.
   Once someone wins the auction, they get eight weeks to complete the purchase.

Add it up and you're looking at around four months, start to finish.

To be clear, that's still faster than the average estate agent sale. But it relies on solicitors sticking to the deadlines, and more and more of them don't, because they've learned more and more that the modern auction contract lacks real bite.

More importantly, four months is what it takes if your home sells first time around.

And that turns out to be a very big if...

Test 2: Will your home actually sell?

Modern method of auction companies don't publish the percentage of listed homes they actually sell. The "95% success rates" you'll see advertised only count sales where a buyer has already been found and paid a reservation fee.

Certainty is the whole reason you'd be drawn to modern auction, right? You want this done and dusted.

So think about it. If you want certainty, the best sales pitch in the world would be a company simply saying: "we sell 98% of the homes we take on." They wouldn't need to say anything else.

Here's the thing I find interesting: they don't publish that number.

And from what I hear from people within the industry, some of the biggest modern auction companies are selling as little as 30 to 40% of the properties they take on.

If that's anywhere near right, maybe 6 or 7 in every 10 sellers who put their trust in this are being let down, and left to pick up the pieces afterwards.

So it's not as fast as it sounds, and it's far from certain.

But... at least it's going to be easy... right?! Well, let's put that to the test too...

Test 3: Is modern auction hassle-free?

Selling by the modern method of auction involves the full, normal house sale process: a solicitor, a legal pack, viewings, conveyancing and mortgage waits. The main difference is that you go through it all with far fewer buyers to work with.

There's no shortcut here. You've still got:

• A solicitor to appoint, and a full legal pack to prepare.
• Viewings, and the wait for a buyer.
• The full conveyancing process at the end.
• Even waiting on mortgage offers.

And you tell me if this sounds easy and stress-free:

• Complaints.
  The Property Ombudsman reported in June 2026 that auctions make up around 2% of house sales, yet generate more than four times their share of complaints. Modern auction was named as a growing source.
• Reviews.
  Take the biggest firm in the market, iamsold. On its own Trustpilot page, around 12% of all its reviews are one-star. That's 1 in 8. And you'll find similar patterns at other companies too.

You might notice most of those complaints come from buyers. That's true. But based on my time in property, I've tended to see that how a company treats one side of the deal tells you plenty about how it'll treat the other too.

So: not fast, not certain, and "convenient" doesn't exactly seem to be the word. Which leaves the big one...

Test 4: What does modern auction cost you?

Modern method of auction fees are paid by the winning buyer, typically 4 to 6% of the sale price including VAT, with minimum fees around £6,000. Buyers usually reduce their offers to cover that fee, so in practice the cost still comes out of the seller's pocket.

Something I still hear about routinely are modern auction companies and estate agents telling you that modern auction is "completely free for you as the seller!"

I spoke with another seller this week who'd been told exactly that.

According to the company, it's "free" because the buyer pays the auction fee, not you.

And a quick note on those fees. They're expensive:

• On lower-value homes.
  Minimum fees usually start around £6,000. On a £60,000 house, that's a 10% fee.
• On higher-value homes.
  Fees typically land around 4 to 6% once VAT is added. That's £8,000 to £12,000 on a £200,000 home.

If you're wondering how they got this big, I've broken down why modern auction fees are so high in a separate guide.

And here's the thing: buyers aren't stupid.

If someone's got a £10,000 fee to pay on a house they want to offer on, they'll simply lower their offer by £10,000. Meaning you get less at the end of the process. So ultimately, you are paying the price.

This gets misrepresented so often that The Property Ombudsman has made it explicit: agents recommending modern auction must warn you that buyers may reduce their offers because of the fee. It can't be presented as free.

Now, in fairness, the one time the fee might not reduce a buyer's offer is when they fail to spot the fee in the first place. And I've seen many instances where modern auction companies deliberately try to hide the fee from buyers.

• Fees are commonly buried in small print.
• Some companies even write the words out in full. For example, putting "five thousand pounds plus vat" instead of "£5,000+vat", to make it easier to hide in the small print.

Pretty nasty tactics.

And auction companies have rightly been pulled up by the pulled up by the Advertising Standards Authority for not making fees clear next to the guide price.

(Again... if a company is willing to treat buyers like that, think about how they're willing to treat their sellers too...)

Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with a company being expensive if it's really good. My problem with modern auction is that, as we've covered, it doesn't seem to be.

But is that big auction fee the only cost? No. And it's not even the biggest one...

The real cost: fewer buyers, lower price

Selling by the modern method of auction typically means accepting around 10 to 15% less than you'd get with a decent local estate agent, because the process and high reservation fee drives away most buyers. On a £250,000 home, that's potentially £25,000 to £35,000 off your sale price.

The fact is most buyers won't touch auction, modern or otherwise.

Imagine a first-time buyer who's scraped together £15,000 in savings for a deposit...

Now they're told to hand over £10,000, non-refundable, on a property their solicitor hasn't properly checked yet, to a company with reviews that can be honestly pretty scary.

For that buyer:

1. They're gambling their savings.
   If something goes wrong and they have to pull out, they lose the lot and get set back years.
2. Many can't afford the house any more.
   Their mortgage deposit just disappeared in fees!

So most walk away. And that hits your price twice:

• Less competition.
  Fewer buyers bidding means less pressure pushing your price up.
• You lose the best payers.
  Emotionally driven mortgage buyers pay the highest prices, and this process drives them away first.

Structuring the fee this way (with the buyer having to pay it) literally benefits no one... except the modern auction company themselves. Who get to wrongfully position the service as "free" to the sellers, in order to sign more people up.

Everyone else worse off, except the modern auction company themselves.

All-in, having watched these modern auction sales play out from inside the industry for years, I'd expect around 10 to 15% less than you'd get selling with a decent local estate agent. On a £250,000 home, that's £25,000 to £35,000. Gone.

The a price tag like that, it seems pretty remarkable that we've got estate agents all over the country telling people it's free!

What happens when a modern auction sale falls through?

And there's another sting in the fee structure too...

You might think that if your buyer pulls out, that big reservation fee they paid comes to you as compensation... right?

Wrong. Here's what actually happens:

1. The auction company keeps the fee. (You get nothing.)
2. Your house gets relisted.
3. If it sells again, they charge the next buyer another fee.

So they make more money if your sale falls through, while you deal with months of delay and disappointment.

I wish that was everything on price. It's not. There's one more risk, and almost nobody warns sellers about it...

The auction scar: the risk nobody mentions

A failed auction leaves a public record of a home being marketed well below its value and still not selling. Future buyers find that history and assume something is wrong, which can cost tens of thousands of pounds on the eventual sale.

I speak with people every week who think auction is risk-free: "I'll set a reserve price. If I get it, I'm happy. If I don't, I'm not forced to sell. I'm protected either way."

Here's why that's not quite true though...

If your home fails to sell at auction, future buyers will, in all likelihood, find that old listing. And two questions pop into their heads:

• "What must be wrong with this house for it to go to auction?"
• "And what's so bad about it that it didn't even sell there?"

It gets worse too...

Auctions market homes at low guide prices (another 10% below the reserve you set). So a failed attempt means your home has also publicly failed to sell at a bargain price.

Buyers are left thinking: "if it didn't sell at that low price, how little must it really be worth?"

So if modern auction fails you, you head back to the market afterwards with red flags hanging over your home.

I call it the auction scar, and it can cost you tens of thousands of pounds. I've covered what happens if your house doesn't sell at auction in a separate guide.

So that's all four tests. Let's put the pitch and the reality side by side:

If you'd like the fuller breakdown of the upsides and downsides, this guide covers them all:

Related: Modern Auction Pros and Cons

Now, I know I'm being negative here, and that's genuinely not my intention. So let me push as hard as I can to find the good...

When the modern method of auction can work

The modern method of auction can genuinely find a buyer when a home is priced cheaply and sits in a busy area with plenty of demand. Most sellers in that position, though, could agree a sale through a good local estate agent more quickly, and usually at a better price.

Price your home cheap enough to look attractive, in an area with plenty of buyers, and yes, you'll probably sell.

But here's the thing...

If you're in that position, you don't need modern auction. A decent local agent can have your sale agreed in two weeks, probably at a better price, and probably with a higher chance of completing.

That's why I find it so hard to recommend Modern Auction.

So how has something with results this poor got so big? Two reasons:

1. The payoff for estate agents.
   Agents typically earn half of that big auction fee when they talk a seller into modern auction. It's a big payday for very little work, and it's a large part of why so many people end up selling by modern auction.
2. The demand is real.
   A lot of people want exactly what it claims to offer: sell way faster than with an estate agent, still at a really good price, without giving the house away.

Because the demand for a way to sell fast (without giving your house away), is real. Everyone wants it. Me included.

So here's the best answer I came up with.

What I'd do instead for a fast sale at a good price

Years ago, I had this exact problem myself. I've personally sold over 500 homes for clients, and bought and sold over 100 of my own as well.

I wanted to sell them quickly (without giving them away cheap), and there was no good answer out there. So, over time, I built one.

I've used that process at a serious scale:

• Over 100 of my own properties sold.
  Twice as fast as the national average sale.
• For more than the RICS valuation.
  Not just fast and cheap. On average these homes sold for slightly more than an official RICS valuer said they were worth.
• Over 500 client sales too.
  The process has been sharpened over hundreds of repetitions.

We now offer it as a service. We call it our Accelerated Sale.

It's not right for every person or every property, and we are expensive. So it might not be right for you, and that's fine.

But our clients rate the process 4.9 out of 5 across our own three-stage surveys, and clients who've been through it have only ever left us 5-star Trustpilot reviews.

If you'd rather compare every fast-sale route side by side first, start with my guide on how to sell your house fast for the best price.

And if you're wondering if traditional auction could be right for you instead, it's a different "tool" from modern auction, and it works well in specific circumstances. I've explained how to tell if it fits your home in my guide on whether it's worth selling your house by auction.

So, is the modern method of auction any good? If you want to sell faster than an estate agent and still get a strong price, I don't think it's the answer. I wish it was.

Not sure which route is right for you? That's exactly what I help with. My free quiz looks at your property and your priorities, then points you in the right direction, in about 60 seconds.

Thanks for reading, and hit the button below to get started:

Common questions about the modern method of auction

1

How long does the modern method of auction take?

A typical modern method of auction sale takes around four months from start to finish. Getting ready for auction takes around four weeks, the marketing period adds another month, and the winning buyer then has 56 days to complete. The advertised "56 days" only covers that final stage.

2

Is the modern method of auction really free for sellers?

The modern method of auction is marketed as free because the winning buyer pays the auction fee. In reality, buyers usually reduce their offers to cover that fee, so the cost comes out of your sale price. The Property Ombudsman requires agents to warn sellers about exactly this, but many don't.

3

What happens if my buyer pulls out of a modern method of auction sale?

A buyer who pulls out of a modern method of auction sale loses their reservation fee, but that money goes to the auction company and the estate agent, not to the seller. Then the home is relisted, and the company can charge the next buyer another fee. Sellers are left with the delay and no compensation.

4

Do you sell for less with the modern method of auction?

Selling by the modern method of auction usually means getting around 10 to 15% less than you'd get with a good local estate agent. The buyer's fee shrinks your buyer pool, and less competition means lower offers. On a £250,000 home, that's £25,000 to £35,000.

5

When does the modern method of auction work well?

The modern method of auction tends to find a buyer when a home is priced cheaply in a busy area with lots of demand. Most sellers in that position, though, could agree a sale through a decent local estate agent within a couple of weeks, usually at a better price and with a higher chance of completing.

6

What's the difference between traditional auction and the modern method of auction?

At a traditional auction the winning buyer is legally committed the moment the hammer falls, and usually completes within 28 days. With the modern method of auction, the buyer only pays a reservation fee and gets 56 days to complete, so they can still walk away and lose just that fee.