Guest Barista Shaun
The only time I’d been to an auction previously was when my older brother got fleeced for a beat-up old Honda Civic. He went $500 over his maximum in the heat of the bidding, and explained this to his (now ex-) wife by saying – “I was just trying to push him up”.
Armed with these tactics my wife and I went along to an auction for an apartment that we were really keen on. We had only been in Auckland for 10 days, and in that time we’d seen some reasonable places, a couple of gems, and a whole lot of dreck. I’m pretty sure that one qualification for a two bedroom apartment would be the ability to get a bed into the second bedroom, but that appears not to be the case. The ‘leaky homes’ legacy was omnipresent. One vendor was selling because she couldn’t afford to pay her mortgage as well as the $130,000 it had cost her to get the apartment reclad.
That story alone made a 1940s apartment very attractive. Sunny outdoor area, lots of space, all one level, block of seven, OSP, great location on quiet street etc etc. Around fifty people turned up for the auction, way more than I expected. The auctioneer looked predatory sharp – sharp suit, sharp eyes, sharp voice, sharp gestures, sharp blade applied to gleaming skull – I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d started to circle the bidders with his quick strides.
He built tension by theatrically outlining the benefits of the property, a performance as rousing as it was unnecessary, we’d seen the place after all. Once the bidding commenced things moved swiftly, advancing in amounts of five or ten thousand. He used an interesting tactic to identify the serious buyers – at an early stage quite obviously below the reserve, he made as if to close the bidding down. Three or four sets of hands shot up, and my wife almost tore my leg off in a signal to get a bid in.
There was a long way to go yet though. A phone bidder from Invercargill was in and out fairly early, and two or three others dropped out after the first five minutes or so. Up we went, along with the air pressure, until there were just a couple of us going tit for tat, me feigning confidence, he appearing (perhaps tactically?) more and more hesitant. A couple of times I thought we had it, but just as it seemed the bidding was closing down the other guy would raise it a thousand.
In the middle of it all there was a delay while the auctioneer conferred with the vendor at length, apparently to ascertain whether or not the amount we had reached was enough to put the property on the market. Finally the auctioneer came over to us saying it was very close, but did we have any more. We weren’t at our limit, but tried to convey that we couldn’t go much further (canny tactics I reckon).
The bidding resumed, with the announcement that we were now on the market, and that the property would be sold today. Twice more we got down to “going twice…” before the other bidder made another thousand dollar raise, prompting palpitations and filthy looks from our camp.
At last, after about 20 minutes of bidding, delays and performance, that much-anticipated ‘SOLD!’ came, followed by applause, hugs, handshakes and backslaps. I was more dazed and relieved than exhilarated, but writing out a 10% cheque for the deposit introduced some reality to the situation.
Which brings us to the next step, a morass of revolving credit, fixed-term, capped rate, multi-account blather that sucks the brain like Fanta and initially makes about as much sense as a belch. I’ll spare you the details.