At the end of my last article on property auctions we ended up in the bar! Most auction venues are in hotels and the bar is a vital facility for either celebrating your success, drowning your sorrows or recovering from a last minute realisation that you were actually going after a 'dud' property. In the hotel bars, post auction, you will generally find the property traders and investors, but seldom the emotional private buyer who was after a specific lot, and these guys are almost always ready to have a chat.

This is when and where traders and investors network. Networking doesn't really happen before the auction, as more often than not, there is still work to be done, often involving late arrival legal packs, and in any event, you don't really want to be talking about the lots that you are interested in.

But before you head to the bar, there are still some other matters that I need to talk you through because, even if you're interested in a lot halfway through the auction, you shouldn't just be sitting twiddling your thumbs literally or metaphorically until your time to shine arrives.

In an earlier article I talked about the relationship between the guide and reserve price; that the reserve price should be within 10% of guide and that you can gauge the heat of the room by how much 'over guide'  individual lots are selling for.