Bidding to a Number

Setting your maximum, costs on the day and never getting carried away

The buyers who thrive at auction treat the room as a place to carry out a decision already made, and this book gives you the one thing to carry in with you: a maximum bid. It separates the numbers that decide a lot from the noise of guide prices, reserves and past results, and shows where to find reliable local data for free. You will learn to work out a true end value rather than an inflated one, and to build the full cost stack that sits beyond the hammer price. Your maximum is then stress-tested against a bad refurbishment, a down-valuation and a rate rise. A complete worked example follows one lot from the catalogue to the fall of the gavel, and the final chapter hands you a maximum-bid calculator to run on any lot, along with the legal questions it cannot answer. Next in this series: “Reading the Legal Pack”.

What’s inside

• The only numbers that actually matter at auction
• Where to find reliable local data for free
• Working out true value, not optimistic value
• The full cost stack nobody mentions
• Stress-testing the bad refurb, the down-valuation and the rate rise
• A complete worked example, from guide to gavel
• Your maximum-bid calculator, and the legal questions it cannot answer

Educational material only, not financial, legal or tax advice. Results are not typical and are not a guarantee of income. Freedom Property Academy LTD, registered in England and Wales.