My last article looked at the Auction Viewing Day, your first opportunity to get out into the 'real' world rather than work online in the 'virtual' world. I mentioned two Analysers, my Auction Lot Analyser (ALA) and Investment Property Analyser (IPA) which number-crunches deals in 'quick time' (5-10 min), before making a bid or offer.

Throughout this article I refer to both the ALA and IPA. This article is not intended to be an advertorial but to show you why, at the very least, you need something very similar if you are going to avoid costly mistakes.

The IPA was initially designed to number-crunch auction properties, including the fix-up costs, because the majority of auction properties require work and the fix-up cost is a major factor in calculating your maximum bid, but the IPA can just as easily be used to calculate offers outside of the auction rooms.

The IPA or similar is needed because the time available to accurately cost up auction property is far less than estate agents sales.
Auctions have a 3-4 week period between catalogue release and auction day, an immovable date. With estate agents, the pressure only starts when another offer is made and even then over 30% of all offers withdraw for one reason or another.