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
![Ronan Connolly](https://lbndaily.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Ronan0006-e1595947614872.jpg)
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.”