Should You Sell an Unusual Property at Auction? (A Real Consultation)

When your home is unlike anything else for miles around, a lot of the usual selling advice can stop working. There's nothing to compare it with, the agent seems stuck, and auction can start to look like some sort of obvious way out.

I've now done over 800 free consultations with home sellers, and this exact question came up on a call recently. Peter (not his real name) and his wife were selling a large, one-of-a-kind building in a rural village, and two months on the market hadn't brought a single viewing. I've changed some details to protect their privacy.

They had a deadline to meet, and Peter wanted to know whether to cut the price or send it to auction. He left the call with a clear answer on auction, and a plan to give his home a much better chance of being sold more quickly.

Auction can reach investors with vision who'll take on an unusual property that estate agents struggle to place. But if the property can get a mortgage, auction usually means accepting 10 to 15% less. It isn't a guaranteed sale either, and a failed auction can make the home harder to sell afterwards.

But whether auction is right for your home depends on why it isn't selling in the first place, and how much time you have. So here's how it played out for Peter.

If you want to cut to the chase and find out whether auction is the right fit for your own property, I've designed a free 60-second quiz to answer exactly that. If it is, I can introduce you to an auction house I know and trust. If it isn't, I'll point you towards what I'd suggest instead.

Hit the button below to get started:

1. Peter's situation: a one-of-a-kind building with no viewings

Here's where things stood when Peter booked the call:

• A large building that doesn't fit any box.
  It's well over 2,000 square feet, on the main road through a rural village. Peter and his wife bought it derelict over a decade ago, and it's since been a café, a restaurant and more.
• Two homes in one.
  They live upstairs, with their own front door. The whole ground floor runs as a holiday let, which brings in a healthy income even though they close it over the winter.
• Newly able to get a mortgage.
  Until this year, a planning restriction stopped anyone living in the main part of the building. Peter got that changed, so it can now be lived in as a normal home, and a buyer can get a mortgage on it.
• A plot of land nobody can build on.
  A separate parcel of land across the road comes with it, but a covenant and the local planning rules stop anyone building a house on it.
• No comparables, and no agreed value.
  There's nothing like it nearby. One agent's valuation spanned a £200,000 range, and Peter's own guess was somewhere between £400,000 and £600,000. As he put it, trying to get an accurate valuation was like throwing darts at a wall blindfolded.
• Two months, not a single viewing.
  It's listed with an online agent who put it on Rightmove and hasn't been in touch since. Their only suggestion so far has been to drop the price.
• No mortgage and no hard deadline, but time matters.
  Peter and his wife are in their early sixties and want to travel. As Peter said, at their age time becomes more valuable than anything.

Peter's question boiled down to this: cut the price, or send it to auction? Before we could judge either one, we had to be clear about what was actually holding the sale back.

2. What was actually holding the sale back

It wasn't the market. Around a quarter of similarly priced homes nearby had sales agreed, which is reasonable for a rural area. The problem was the buyer. A building that fits no particular box has very few people looking for it, and an agent who only lists it online is waiting for one of them to stumble across it.

We started with the two-minute market check I do on most calls. Of around 40 homes for sale within a few miles, in a broad band around Peter's price, about a quarter had sales agreed. I see anywhere from 10% to 50% around the country, so for a rural area, that's pretty healthy.

So buyers were buying. The issue was who Peter's buyer actually is.

A building like this isn't for someone opening a restaurant. It isn't purely for a holiday let investor, a builder or a family. It isn't for any one thing.

But it has served Peter and his wife unbelievably well for years, so somewhere out there is someone else whose unusual mix of needs it fits perfectly. The trouble is there aren't many of them, and the countryside location thins that pool even further.

That's where the agent comes in. On our own sales, only around 30% of sales come from the Rightmove listing itself. The other 70% or so come from the proactive work good agents do. They ring the buyers on their database, and cross-sell to people viewing other homes ("we've got a wildcard you should have a look at").

Peter's online agent had very few homes in his price bracket nearby, so they had nobody to ring. Their one shot was the Rightmove listing, and it wasn't doing the building any favours:

• It struggled to show up in searches.
  When I searched at this price within a few miles of the nearest town, it didn't appear. It was too far away.
• The photos were sloppy.
  Several were blurry, and some pointed down towards the floor.
• Buyers had an easy reason to scroll past.
  Its long shape and main-road spot give people a quick excuse to think, "that's not for me".

So two months without a viewing wasn't really a verdict on the price. The right buyer simply hadn't seen the building yet, because the market hadn't properly been tested.

Which brought us back to the question Peter had come with. If the right buyer wasn't coming through the agent, would an auction find them?

3. Should you sell an unusual property at auction?

Peter had already been wondering about auction, and there's a genuine case for it with a building like his.

Auction suits an unusual property best when it can't get a mortgage, or when it's a clear development opportunity, because cash investors are the realistic buyers anyway. For an unusual home that can get a mortgage, it usually means accepting less money, with no guarantee of a sale and a real risk to the price afterwards if it fails.

Here's the detailed breakdown: the real case for auction, what it would have cost Peter, and the risk that most sellers never hear about.

3.1. The case for auction: buyers with vision

I've worked closely with some of the leading auction houses over the last five years, and they attract a very different kind of buyer from the ones an estate agent rings.

Picture Peter's agent going through their list of buyers. The family with two kids won't buy it. The couple who are downsizing won't buy it. A local developer only buys old bungalows to modernise and sell on. So the agent ends up with nobody to call.

Auction rooms are different. They draw investors who'll take on quirkier buildings and more unusual projects, such as:

• Someone who wants a going concern.
  An investor who's run holiday lets or serviced accommodation before, and wants another one with the income already coming in.
• Someone who unlocks land.
  Some investors make their living challenging covenants and planning refusals, turning blocked land into building plots. To them, the plot across the road could look like their profit.

So there's a genuine argument that auction could find interest Peter would struggle to reach through Rightmove and the agents. That's why I didn't rule it out. But it comes at a price...

3.2. What would auction cost?

Selling at auction typically leaves you with around 10 to 15% less than a well-run open-market sale. On a home like Peter's, that could easily mean £50,000 to £80,000.

In many situations, it can be far more. To be clear, that's not the auction fees, which are a small fraction of that. It's the lower selling price you get. And you lose so much at auction for two reasons:

1. Far fewer buyers.
   Most people can't buy at auction, or just don't want to. Fewer buyers in the room means less competition to push the price up.
2. The buyers who are left want a bargain.
   Auction buyers are mostly there to make a profit, so they're the people who pay the lowest prices.

And auction isn't even the most expensive shortcut. House-buying companies typically pay around 80% of market value, which I explain in my guide to how much house-buying companies really pay.

For Peter, the cost of auction was easy enough to put a number on. The bigger question was whether he'd even get a sale.

3.3. Would an unusual property even sell at auction?

Auction isn't a guaranteed sale. Most lots do sell, but about 30% don't. A rural, niche property without a simple pitch to investors is exactly the kind that can fail to sell.

Auction works best when the pitch to an investor is simple: here's a building plot, get planning, sell the houses, make a profit. Peter's building doesn't have a pitch that clean. It's a large home, a holiday let and a parcel of covenanted land, all rolled into one.

That's a lot for a bargain hunter to get their head around in the few weeks before an auction. So even in a room full of investors, it might not catch anyone's eye. If you want the wider numbers, I go through them in my guide to how often houses sell at auction.

And if it doesn't sell, that isn't the end of the story...

3.4. What happens if a property doesn't sell at auction?

A failed auction can leave a mark on a property. Buyers start wondering what's wrong with it, and the low guide price stays on record. Both can make it harder to get a good price through an estate agent afterwards.

Think about how it looks from the outside. Someone sees a property that's been on the market a while. Then it goes to auction. Then it doesn't sell at auction either. The obvious question is: "what's  wrong with that place?"

Then there's the price. Auction houses usually advertise a property at a guide price around 10% below the reserve, to draw bidders in. So a reserve of £400,000 would mean Peter's building being advertised at around £360,000.

If it doesn't sell, buyers can dig that history up. And that would leave Peter with two problems when he goes back to an agent:

1. Every buyer has a lower number in their head.
   Asking £450,000 or £500,000 becomes much harder when the same building was advertised at around £360,000 a few months earlier.
2. The failed attempt raises doubts.
   Buyers wonder what the auction room knew that they don't.

So a failed auction attempt can cause you more problems, rather than solve any.

It isn't fatal, though, and there's a simple way to handle the question if a buyer asks:

Top tip: If a buyer asks why your property went to auction and didn't sell, keep the answer short and true. You wanted a quick sale so you could get on with your plans. It didn't work out, so now it's back with an agent at its full price.

I cover the practical side in more detail in what happens if your house doesn't sell at auction. So was auction ever going to be right for Peter?

3.5. What I suggested instead: get an auction valuation

For me, the deciding factor is usually mortgageability. If a property can't get a mortgage, most ordinary buyers are out of the picture anyway, so auction is one of the few routes left.

Peter's building had only just become mortgageable. That took away the strongest reason to use auction, and it meant auction would mostly shrink a pool of buyers that was already small. I go through the kinds of property that tend to suit it in what types of property are suitable for auction.

So I wasn't convinced auction was right for Peter. But an auction house knows its buyers' appetite best, and for a building this unusual, I didn't think he could afford not to ask.

I offered to introduce him to an auction house we've recommended for years, one of the biggest in the country. Crucially, they'll give him an honest valuation, even if that means telling him not to go ahead. You want someone who'll tell you the truth, not someone who'll sell you into it and lead you into a failed auction attempt and a bunch more headaches.

It would also tell Peter what he'd be giving up, whether that's £50,000, £100,000 or more. That's useful to know, whichever way he goes.

Just so you know, a company we recommend may pay us a referral fee if you use them. It's one of the ways we can give free advice and stay in business, but we only recommend companies we've personally vetted and trust, and who we know are genuinely good.

Auction probably wasn't Peter's first move, but it might be yours. If you're weighing it up for your own property, get a straight answer first. This free 60-second quiz will tell you whether auction genuinely fits your situation. If it does, I'll introduce you to an auction house I know and trust. If it doesn't, I'll tell you what I'd suggest instead.

Hit the button below to get started:

So if auction was a backstop rather than the answer, how could Peter give his home a better chance of being found by the right buyer?

4. Peter's plan: give the open market a proper chance first

The plan was to give the open market a proper, well-set-up run before turning to auction. That meant two better-placed agents, photos that do the building justice, a price chosen deliberately, and the legal work started early. Auction stays on the table as a backstop, not a first resort.

Near the end of the call, Peter admitted he'd been hoping for a magic bullet, like a database of buyers to send it to.

But for a home like this, there isn't one. What there is, is a set of changes that gently stack the odds in your favour, one at a time.

Here's the plan I gave him, step by step:

1. Move to two agents who actually sell homes like it.
   Why: Peter wasn't tied into a contract, and his building depends on agents ringing the right people. Two agents means two databases and two teams making those calls.
   
   How: pick agents who are already listing and selling homes in a similar price bracket within a few miles. I give an overview of how we choose agents, and how two agents work together, in my five-part sale-setup workshop (agent selection from 9:50, two agents from 18:33). Then ring each agent every seven to ten days to ask whether they've spoken to anyone who might suit, so your home stays front of mind.
2. Get photos that make people stop scrolling.
   Look at your new agents' other listings. If those look great, let them do their thing. If not, pay a freelance property photographer a couple of hundred pounds. An unusual home needs a listing with enough wow to make people curious.
3. Put it in front of property investors directly.
   Lots of unusual properties change hands off the market, through local investor groups who do quirkier deals. I offered to share Peter's listing in a local property investor network I'm part of. It might come to nothing, but it costs nothing. Peter had a good idea of his own too: sending the listing to past holiday let guests, who've already visited the building in person.
4. Choose your price by choosing your regret.
   The problem. With no comparables, you can justify £600,000 as a possible valuation, and you can justify £400,000. There just isn't enough evidence to price from, and not enough potential buyers to sample.
   
   The trap. On an ordinary home, a price cut usually brings viewings and offers within a week or two. But Peter could cut to £400,000 tomorrow and still get no viewings, simply because the right buyer isn't looking that month. Chase the market down in steps, and all you do is give that buyer the opportunity to pay £50,000 or £100,000 less when they finally do turn up.
   
   The solution: pick the regret you can live with. I put it to Peter like this. If you priced at £450,000 and sold in six weeks, would you be delighted it was done, or kicking yourself for not trying £550,000? On the flip side, if you held out at £550,000 or more and were still there at the end of next summer, would that feel fine, or would you wish you'd gone lower sooner? Neither answer is wrong. But it can help pinpoint your priorities, and help you make the right pricing decision for your real underlying goals.
5. Consider buying time instead of cutting the price.
   Peter has no mortgage. On a building worth this much, a modest loan against it could fund his travels now, and paying someone to manage the holiday let could keep the income coming in. That way, he could hold out for a strong price and still get on with his plans.
   
   Peter rightly pointed out that a holiday let is hard work. Guests break things, and it's constant maintenance. But when the alternative might be cutting £100,000 or more off the price, it's worth seeing whether paying someone a good share of the income to handle it could work. Please speak to a qualified mortgage adviser before borrowing against your home.
6. Get the legal work ready before the buyer appears.
   Why: for most homes, finding the buyer is the easy part. Getting the sale through to completion is the bigger challenge, and nationally around one in three sales fall through. When your buyer is this rare, you can't afford to lose them.
   
   How: Peter didn't have a solicitor. At the very least, I'd sign one up now and get the forms and ID checks done, so the contract can go out on day one. Better still are the newer up-front conveyancing services, which start the legal work for both sides while the home is still on the market. They cost more, so they suit you best if you're fully committed to selling, as Peter is.
7. Set a date for the backstop.
   Give the open market a proper run, with two good local agents and a strong set of photos. If it still hasn't sold after a year or so, it goes into an auction a year from now, priced to sell, because by then they just want to move on. That way, auction becomes a deliberate plan B, not a panic move.

How long will it take? Nobody can promise that, and I'd be wary of anyone who did. It could take up to a year to find the right buyer. But if that wait is worth an extra £100,000 or more towards Peter's next chapter, it may well be worth it. Especially if he can get on with his plans in the meantime.

This was also one of the rare calls where I told the seller our own accelerated sale service probably wasn't the best use of his money. We're very good at getting a home in front of as many buyers as possible, negotiating well when an offer lands, and getting sales over the line. But no service can make a rare buyer appear sooner, and that was Peter's real problem.

5. Where Peter got to

Peter left the call with auction moved from a first resort to a backstop. He had an introduction to an auction house for an honest valuation, and a plan to give the open market a proper chance first.

The biggest shift was in how he saw the problem. Two months without a viewing had started to feel like a verdict on the building. It wasn't. His home needed to be seen by more of the few people it would suit, not sent to a room full of bargain hunters.

He also had more going for him than most sellers in a stuck sale:

• No mortgage, so no lender breathing down his neck.
• No hard deadline, so time to let the plan work.
• Room on the price, if the evidence points that way.
• A reasonably healthy local market, with homes nearby selling.

Someone already with the two best agents for six months, with zero viewings, a dead market and no room on price, would be at a dead end. Peter was nowhere near that.

If your own home is one of a kind and you're wondering whether auction is the answer, you can book a free consultation the same way Peter did. I'll tell you what I'd do in your situation, and if you don't need anyone's help, I'll tell you that too.

Thanks for reading!

Frequently asked questions

1

What types of property are best suited to auction?

Auction tends to suit properties that can't get a mortgage, need major work, or offer investors a clear profit. In those cases, cash investors are the realistic buyers anyway. For an unusual home that can get a mortgage, auction usually shrinks the pool of buyers instead. Read more in what types of property are suitable for auction.

2

What happens if a property doesn't sell at auction?

A property that doesn't sell at auction can go back on the market with an estate agent. The risk is that buyers find the failed auction and its lower guide price, and wonder what's wrong with it. That can make a good price harder to achieve. More in what happens if your house doesn't sell at auction.

3

How much less do houses sell for at auction?

Selling at auction typically leaves you with around 10 to 15% less than a well-run open-market sale. That's mostly the price, not the fees: far fewer buyers can bid, and most of those want a bargain. On a £500,000 home, that's roughly £50,000 to £75,000. More in do houses sell for less at auction.

4

Will cutting the price of an unusual house get more viewings?

A price cut on a rare, unusual property often doesn't bring new viewings, because the right buyer may not be looking that month. It can just mean they pay less when they arrive. So check the agent, the photos and the marketing first, then set the price once. I go through a similar case in this consultation about a house that hadn't sold in two years.

5

How do you value a property with no comparables?

A one-of-a-kind property often has no valuation anyone can truly defend, because there's nothing to measure it against. Gather what evidence you can, including an honest auction valuation as one data point. Then decide which regret you'd rather live with: selling sooner for less, or waiting longer for more.