Merseyside property firm Venmore is latest local auction house, along with Sutton Kersh and Smith and Sons, to report booming online sales. Tony McDonough reports
Venmore is the latest Merseyside property auction house to report a surge in sales after raising a record £3.5m from its latest online event.
Similar to local rivals Sutton Kersh and Smith and Sons, Liverpool-based Venmore Auctions has taken its auctions online following the coronavirus epidemic and subsequent lockdown.
At its latest event it sold 38 lots out of a possible 42 – a success rate of more than 90%. Properties, on average, sold for 21.2% above guide price. Venmore says it saw a swathe of new buyers, some from overseas, looking to secure long-term income and making bids at pre-COVID levels.
It said many of the lots attracted strong bids well ahead of the actual auction. Randolph Street in north Liverpool, with a guide price between £40,000-£45,000, sold for £72,500 and Hawarden Avenue in the south of the city sold for £236,000 which represented £61,000 more than its guide price.
Venmore says spike in prices in part is to Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s recent changes to Stamp Duty Land Tax, raising the threshold from £125,000 to £500,000, is encouraging a whole new group to delve into the world of property development and investment.
Ronan Connolly, director of Venmore Auctions, said: “Our next auction is on the September 9 and we are already registering plenty of new potential buyers to the auction arena.
Paul Lea, chairman of the Venmore Group, added: “As well as the tremendous success enjoyed by the auction team, we’ve also seen a real increase in our consultancy services. Our mortgage business wrote in excess of 180 mortgages in July and private treaty sales broke records not seen since 2005.”