Comments on: Property buying should never succumb to the euphoria of novelty marketing

By: Alistair Helm

Alistair Helm — Sun, 24 May 2009 19:53:21 +0000

Auctioned closed at the alloted time with the winning bid of $250,000 being placed on Saturday – the day before the close – that final bid was a clear statement of purchase, the prior bid was for $233,032.

Why did the final bidder over spend by $17,000?

By: David L

David L — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:46:54 +0000

Competition…….the effort of two or more parties acting independently to secure the business of a third party by offering the most favorable terms.

Is there a winner in this exercise?

Just like Brad Maxwells attempt they will keep coming…its the outcome not the journey in this case, so would be most interested too Alistair to see if the S&P gets signed for the final bid amount?

By: Ross Brader

Ross Brader — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:35:37 +0000

I was just about to offer a badly run down rotting letterbox for auction with a house and land attached for free – LOL! You have talked me out of it Alistair!

Seriously though when trademe allowed property auctions I know of one instance where the seller could not get the purchaser to follow through and make the sale binding by the signing of a sale and purchase agreement. I am sure this would have been a frequent occurence an no doubt complaints forced trademe to withdraw property auctions from the site.

By: Alistair Helm

Alistair Helm — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:29:51 +0000

I see that Stuff Business has published an article on this post. The comment from Trade Me is very interesting:

Trade Me head of commercial Mike O’Donnell responded to Helm’s criticisms by saying Trade Me always ensured its customers were not misled and that Helm was simply frustrated Trade Me had 2.5 times more listings than Realestate.co.nz.

“I would suggest that Alastair Helm is suffering from auction envy,” said O’Donnell.

I think Mike O”Donnell may be mistaken on the statistics, realestate.co.nz actually has around 35% more listings than trade me property. Trade me property has more visitors – not quite 2.5 times, in April it was the case that trade me property had 797,396 UB’s and realestate.co.nz 354,357 UB’s which is not 2.5 times the traffic either!

As for claim that we might be suffering from auction envy! – I am not sure what prompted this comment, we are very happy to be a listings portal providing a great service to the real estate industry of NZ – we have no desire to be an auction site – maybe that is where we clearly see our respective roles somewhat differently.