The Essential Information Group (EIG) have now released their data for the 3-months ending December 2015 and they make interesting reading when compared with the quarter ending December 2014.

The attention grabbing stat is that December sales topped £500m, up 4% on December 2014, but more relevant, it was the first time since December 2006 that the market has broken through the £500m barrier in a single month.

If you're going to base a strategy on buying auction property then your investment location needs to be busy with good throughput in the auctions and the regions vary considerably from 175 properties (60 per month) in East Anglia (down from 261 in 2014) to 1,219 (406 monthly) properties in the North West, up from 1,081 (2014).

Another advantage of a high throughput location is the high number of unsold lots, which I wrote about in last month's magazine, and which are still owned by even higher motivated vendors.

Of the 1,219 properties offered in the North West 73% sold in the room, an average result, leaving 334 unsold or 111 each month, but you have to move quickly. Searching for Unsold Lots in the North West on the EIG site results in only 268 lots being listed from 29 auctioneers, so 66 lots or about 20% had been sold by the end of January.