Online auction option relaunched by Guild after 1,000 sales

The Guild of Property Professionals is relaunching its online auction brand - Guild Auctions - even though it has already successfully completed 1,000 sales. 

The relaunch is timed to help sellers dispose of their properties rapidly given wider economic uncertainty and the limited duration of the current stamp duty holiday for properties selling at £500,000 and below.

Guild chief executive Iain McKenzie says Guild Auctions - powered by PropTech platform iamsold - allows member agents to integrate the service into their business and will be able to differentiate themselves from rival agencies by offering clients the option of selling via auction.

“There is a surge of activity in the market, however, sellers and buyers will need to move quickly if they wish to hit the stamp duty holiday deadline by the end of March next year. In reality, with conveyancing taking around 120 days on average to complete, along with the expected delays due to the high volumes of transactions, buyers will need to have had an offer accepted by around the end of September to ensure they benefit from the holiday” says McKenzie.

“The second reason [for the relaunch] is that many people may be in a position where they need to sell quickly as a result of their financial situation changing due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In this case, iamsold’s Modern Method of Auction is an effective solution.”

He continues that while activity is strong in the marketplace at the moment, we are moving into uncharted territory and when we start to come out of the pandemic nobody can tell how robust the sales market will be. 

“It will be important for sellers to have a vehicle they can use to sell their properties quickly if they need to,” says McKenzie.

iamsold - which recently entered into a partnership with Zoopla - contends that the MMA offers more security and transparency than a traditional private treaty sale. 

Timescales are fixed with sales completing within 56 days, and the firm says there is a fall through rate of under five per cent.