Worthy of a mention, as it technically falls outside of the six-month date range, are the auction results of September 2020. The headlines for this month were 77 auctions held, 3,043 lots offered for sale, 2,372 lots sold (remember that withdrawn lots are not included) and approx. £470m raised nationally.

September was hailed as the most positive auction month (across the 36 metrics used by EIG) since Covid-19 restrictions came into effect. The star figure of ^153% representing the percentage increase raised in a single month in the commercial auction arena. Apparently, some people didn’t get the ‘the high street is dead’ memo (he says in jest).

October 2020:
Following on from the success of the September auctions, we still saw a raise in percentage of lots sold based on a year-on-year comparison. The supply of auction lots since Covid-19 is still down and for the month of October this metric was down by 23% (resi down by 13% and comm down 62%). The sales rate was still up over this period by 4.6% (4.5% on resi and 4.7% on comm).

November 2020:
Historically a quiet month for auction (sub-20 auctions), so the result for the additional auctions (39 in total) shows a year-on-year increase of 6.5% for number of lots entered into auction, which seems insignificant but it translates to a 75% increase in the amount raised. Looking at the commercial results for this month revealed a 50% increase in the number of lots offered, with a total raised up by 337% (£13m to £57m).

December 2020:
December is normally a month where the big buyers/ traders disappear early for the holidays and where the market opens for some of the smaller guys to get in there and snag a deal. Well not this December! Aside from the number of lots offered being down year-on-year (December is normally where you’d see a bumper stock of repossessions, which accounts for the majority of ‘corporate’ sale reductions) the percentage sold of 77.8%, and the total raised of approx. £437m, were both up (if only incrementally).