Our Story
We’ve been involved in the property industry for over 13 years:
- We’ve helped thousands of home sellers,
- We’ve directly overseen the sale of hundreds of homes,
- We’ve personally bought almost 150 houses.
We’ve built a huge amount of experience from buying and selling properties, but we noticed an interesting trend in recent years.
Property Auctions are growing
Property auctions used to be a relatively niche part of the property industry. They were commonly used for disposing of tired or run-down “problem properties”, but we saw that changing in recent years.
The change has been driven by the growth of online or “conditional” auctions, also known as the modern method of auction.
Modern auctions are driving growth in the "auction" industry
One of the key innovations is that Modern Auctions allow mortgage buyers to purchase in auctions too.
Because mortgage buyers tend to pay the highest prices, we saw two trends emerging:
- Selling by auction is now a viable option for a larger number of sellers. This is because an auction sale no longer comes with such a heavy compromise on the selling price.
- More and more “modern auction” platforms emerged. There are now more than 50 companies in the UK who you can auction your house with!
People are still frustrated with estate agents
We believe there’s another driving force behind auctions too: The continued frustration with UK estate agents.
The home-selling process has been broken for decades, but unfortunately still nothing has changed.
The hope was that smart technology companies would “disrupt” the industry and “fix” the property market.
Unfortunately, we believe that the rise of online estate agents has only made the problem worse. (Among other issues, by taking up-front fees the online agents look like the cheaper option… But they totally remove any incentive to actually get the house sold for you!)
So people are looking for an alternative way to sell their home.
Why did we build Home Selling Expert?
There's been a rise in the number of people looking online for impartial information about auctions. But there’s been no rise in the amount of high-quality information available to buyers and sellers.
We see this as an on-going opportunity.
Our aims
By building a consumer advice site we aim to do two things:
- Help buyers and sellers make more informed decisions about whether to use auction services, and which to use.
- Help shine a spotlight on the best and most reputable auction houses as the industry expands.
How we'll help
We want to help consumers navigate this developing (and sometimes confusing) industry by giving free impartial guidance and advice on every auction-related topic we can find.
You can navigate our Guides page to start learning more.
How do we generate revenue?
Like many consumer advice websites we’re 100% supported by our audience. When you use a service we recommend we may earn a commission.
But that doesn’t impact the advice we give.
I (the owner, Matt) would never recommend a service to you that wasn’t the best fit for you. In fact, we spend as much time talking our readers out of using auction and pointing them in other directions as we do on recommending auctions.
We’re here because we want to do some good with all the knowledge we’ve built up over the last decade-plus in the property industry. We believe this is a great way to do it.
Browse our in-depth guides:
- Our in-depth guides and FAQ-style articles answer the most common questions people have about property auctions.
- These articles are based on our own extensive experience and in-depth research
- We also consult with the auction industry’s leading experts.
