Company News

After many requests from recipients, EiG produced an additional set of figures for both National analysis and Regional analysis, splitting figures into Residential and Commercial lots. David Leary comments "This is to make it easier to compare all totals using 3 different colour codes."

Tom Sheppard, who collated the data, added; "It has become the norm that over the past few months, there have been wide variations across the country in terms of percent sold and amount raised."

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The Essential Information Group hosted the 10th annual Back to School lunch at La Rueda Restaurant in Tower Hill, London. Attended by over 60 auctioneers this was the biggest event ever, and as always offered the auctioneers the opportunity to catch up with their fellow auctioneers and enjoy fine Spanish wine and food.

Jade Willis commented "The Back to School lunch was, as always, a very successful day. We welcomed some new Auctioneers whilst reuniting with some familiar faces. The Back to School lunch is a great time for all the auctioneers to meet with their peers and discuss matters surrounding the property auction market."

Yesterday David Sandeman addressed the NAEA annual auctioneers conference in the Midlands and in front of 120 auctioneers from all over the country. He set out the state of the market as it is today, the increases that have been seen over the last 5 years and for the first time allowed auctioneer’s to see nationally the relationship between guide prices and reserves. This presentation was done in conjunction with Gary Murphy of Allsop and Charles Smailes of Feather Smailes and Scales.

The audience were very interested to see how the number of lots offered at auction over the last 10 years has doubled and how close to the guide price the reserves are. In addition the graph showed that over 50% of the lots offered were vacant flats and houses.

Commenting on the conference, David Sandeman said "It is always a pleasure to address the annual conference, and as a result of it I have received several requests for copies of the slides for further analysis by various auctioneers."

Today is the publication of the second rapid report. ‘Rapid’ which stands for Residential Auction Property Information Data, is a joint publication between Essential Information Group and one of the leading Property Auctioneers, Allsop. This issue, which can be viewed here, focused on the changing levels of distressed sales which have been appearing in the auctions. From a low in 2004 where only 3% of properties were repossessions, this year has seen over 13% of all lots being repossessions. The report went on to look at the overall returns available, from AST’s both in terms of rental income and capital growth over the last 10 years across the country and considered the yields available on the ground rent sales.

Commenting on the report, Gary Murphy, Principle Auctioneer and partner at Allsop, said "The industry benefits from such analysis in an attempt to understand what has happened in the past and what will be happening in the future."

May 2007 saw the busiest month yet for the use of EiG’s SaleVision service. Auctioneers who use the service have the lots and the bidding shown live both in the room and on the internet as the lots are being offered. 13 auctions offering just under 1,000 lots (nearly a quarter of all lots offered) used the service.

Tom Sheppard, who co ordinates the service with auctioneers said, "The simplicity of use and the way in which the bidding can be viewed over the internet is a great advantage to the Auctioneer, vendor and bidder alike." He went onto say, "every month sees more auctioneers starting to use the service and I predict that soon the majority of lots offered will be viewable online."

EiG is pleased to announce the launch of the ‘Auction Passport’ service that makes the legal documentation for lots available on-line. By having just one username and password, interested parties will be able to view the documentation for the lots of all the participating auctioneers.

David Leary, responsible for the design and development of this initiative said "For the auctioneers it is a turnkey solution to legals on-line, and for the buyer it is a one stop site to view all the legals for the auctioneers using the service."

The first auction house to take advantage of the Auction Passport service is Andrews and Robertson and John Weatherall, Senior Auctioneer said, "This new service will allow our clients to seamlessly download legal packs saving a great deal of time."

David Sandeman, managing director of Eigroup, commented "initial feedback from the auctioneers is very promising and I expect to have a large number using the service by the end of the year."

EiG is pleased to announce the acquisition of www.englishhouseprices.co.uk. The site has full price details on every residential transaction since April 2000, and is updated monthly with up to 100,000 transactions every month.

David Sandeman, Managing Director commented, "The inclusion of this data within our search results page give a new dimension to the market information and comparable evidence available to users."

In line with other providers of similar information, it will be available free to any visitor to the site.

A joint initiative between the Essential Information Group and Allsop, a leading auction house in the UK, has culminated in the publication of the first addition of Rapid. (Click here to view the report). Rapid, which stands for ‘Residential Auction Property Investment Data’, analyses the residential auction market, paying particular focus on investment.

In this first edition not only was the overall market reviewed over the last 10 years but the change in AST yields for various geographical areas of the country plotted on graph to show how yields have fallen from 18% in 1997 down to below 7% today.

David Leary, Head of IT and research, commented, "This is the first time that the residential auction investment market has been analysed and we look forward to producing the biannual reports looking at different topics each time such as ground rent, returns and registered rents. The next publication is due out in September."

For the fourth consecutive time the Essential Information Group exhibited at this major London exhibition. As always it was a excellent opportunity to meet old clients and new, and to accommodate the increasing popularity of the service a larger stand was taken together with more staff to answer all the questions.

David Sandeman delivered three packed seminars on ‘How to buy at Auction’. He commented, "the exhibition is a really good opportunity to meet property people face to face to talk about auction opportunities and we will be back for the Property Investor show in September."

The latest monthly news letter having just been published shows that the auction activity for the year 2006 was the highest ever recorded. A total of 33,994 lots were offered at auction and they raised £5.67 Billion.

Figures for the previous year 2005 were 30,976 lots offered and £4.39 Billion raised. The lots offered were 9.7% up on the previous year and the amount raised a staggering 29.2%.

David Sandeman, Managing director, commented; "All the indications are that the year 2007 is going to be even busier with auctioneers already advising us of bumper catalogues due out in January and February."

Click here to view the Newsletter.