I hope that it is not too sad of me to say that I really look forward to the Essential Information Group monthly (EIG) newsletter. If it is sad of me to say that it’s fine because as an auction buff, it gives me the chance to check out the performance, with a birds eye view of the market.

The headline figures are a little higgledy-piggledy. We start with the percentage sold metric, which is looking a little less sexy at 77.3% (previous months this year have held solidly around the 80% mark). On the flip side to this metric, the amount raised year on year for this period is up 14%. By now most will know what I think about these two metrics and what they tell you about the performance of the market, but it is still a good starting point before we dive into the juicier bits of data.

Before we move on the regional performance, let's take a look at how (in general) residential and commercial assets are performing. I’d love to see the breakdown in performance between flats, houses and HMO’s for the last 36 months and the same for commercial properties, a breakdown of retail, mixed use, industrial, offices etc. In fact, I will reach out to EIG and ask them if they can produce those figures for us to run some analysis to see what's hot, what’s not and what’s in growth.

On the residential side, the numbers look a little flat insofar as the number of lots offered year on year are identical at 1,730 for this period last year and this year (not sure we’ll see that again for some time). The total amount raised is up £40m which is approx. a £17,2m increase year on year. The number of lots offered and the percentage sold is also down marginally on both metrics, but by less than 1% each.

Similarly, commercial lots are experiencing a juxtaposition of results. For instance, the number of lots offered is up approximately 33%, which is representative of an additional 51 properties on last year's numbers. Another positive is that the number of lots sold is up also with an increase of a little over 17%.