Auction-Ready In A Changing Market -Will Hampson

We share why “We Are Selling” is the peak moment in real estate, then shift into a street-level market report on what has changed and what still works. With auctioneer Will Hampson  from the Cooley Group, we break down buyer hesitation, vendor expectations, and the practical moves that keep properties transacting under pressure.
• Why auctions exist to create a deadline and reduce days on market 
• What changing clearance rates really signal and how sales still complete post-auction 
• How buyer behaviour shifts to cautious bidding and fewer true competitors 
• How we advise agents to increase vendor communication and meet weekly face to face 
• When selling prior can make sense with a standout buyer 
• How to frame tough decisions using percentages rather than raw dollars 
• Why the opening bid is the hardest and how “on the market” changes everything 
• Choosing bid increments to match price point and buyer depth 
• What Will loves most about auctions and the story that stayed with him 

Hosted by Lee Woodward Training Systems

Brought to you by The Agency Portal 

🎓 The Complete Salesperson Course – Australia’s premier real estate training, delivered nationally throughout the year. Build the skills, systems, and mindset to perform at the highest level. Learn more →

📚 The Super Coaching Program – An exclusive membership providing ongoing coaching, resources, and strategies to support sustained growth in real estate. Join today →

Discover more:

• Next Events
• Reaching Out - The best of AREC 
• Lee's New Book – Claiming Doors
• Explore Lee Woodward Short Courses
• The Top 100 Business Stories & Life Lessons Of Charles Tarbey

Transcript

Why The Podcast Is Named

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello and welcome back to the podcast We Are Selling. When I was designing this podcast originally, I thought to myself, what will I call it? And then I thought, what's the most exciting part of real estate is being in an auction and it's called on the market, and the auctioneer says, We are selling. So today, you now know why we call the podcast we are selling. It's that peak moment of any moment.

Market Shift And Street-Level View

SPEAKER_01 0:25

But today we're going to do a market report. What's going on? And out there, people are using the term the market's changing. Just for your notice, it has changed. And when a market changed, you now need to go at street level, the people that are seeing eyeball to eyeball what's going on. So we're going to bring an auctioneer in from the Cooley Group. Please welcome Will Hampshire.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Thanks, Leif. Thanks for having me on the show. Yes, certainly an active market at the moment, and uh properties are still transacting. Clearance rates have adjusted, uh, as is the case and we've seen before in markets. Um, having been in the industry since '98 and almost three decades of real estate. I've seen changing marketplaces. We've seen shifts in clearance rates. Um, but certainly the skilled auction agents are still running the process and getting great results. You know, it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

The auction process wasn't actually designed to see if it sells or not. It was actually designed to bring a deadline to a never-ending situation where people have real estate on the market for nine months, two years. So when we come into a change of market, auction is probably more important than ever before in an accelerated marketing program. But the question I have for you is using that frame, what are you seeing now in the marketplace with the purchasing community behaviour and the

Buyer Hesitation And Clearance Reality

SPEAKER_01 1:47

owner's feelings? We'll start with the purchases.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

So purchases out there are probably a little bit more restrained and hesitant, understandably. They don't want to feel that they're overpaying. In saying that, for sort of after properties on the you know, inner subvers that we sell in across Sydney, there's competition and there's buyers out there that are competing well. And we saw that uh on Saturday I was out with Damien, which was a rarity for me. I had some sole prize and postponed. So I was able to uh fill in for Kathleen in our team and and spent the day with Damien and he had a phenomenal day, sold eight from eight of the auctions he conducted. And some of the auctions in those inner suburbs were really well competed, but they were only with two key buyers really that were pushing each other. But it takes, we say it takes two to tango. And if you've got two strong buyers that really want a property, they're getting good results. And I think to your point of time frame, and it does become more about reducing days on market on having the property transacted and perhaps not exceeding reserves by huge amounts, but it's getting the property sold uh in a reasonable time frame. We're seeing currently about 55% clearance we had last Saturday, hot off the press, through through our group across Sydney. But it's the properties that then transacted within a couple of weeks, and then that takes your sell rate to around probably 80%. It's that process that the agents take their buyers and their vendors through in the journey to realise value and come to an agreement on price in a shorter time frame.

Agent Playbook For Vendor Conversations

SPEAKER_01 3:09

What can the agents be doing now differently? Because we've got the change and the auctioneer has been the grand finale, it's been wonderful, but there's an in-between compression now that a well-informed owner is easy to manage. What would you advise the agents out there to be doing in those critical conversations?

SPEAKER_00 3:29

I think um for a lot of agents it's it's increasing the regular communication with the vendors. So the regularity of their communication needs to be a bit more than what it was before in a marketplace where it's buoyant and there's a depth of buyers and the properties are running to auction. They're also looking at the way they utilize the process and the strategy. So some of the agents are opting to, if they have got a standout buyer and they're far above the pack, transact prior and selling prior on occasion. Though for a lot of agents, it's just that written communication to the vendor, verbal communication to the vendor, and then getting face to face with the vendor. So having face-to-face weekly vendor meetings, probably more a necessity in this market than what it might be in a buoyant market. And getting in front of the sellers, also doing private showings with the buyers and nursing the buyers and holding the buyers' hand closely to keep them, their interest in that property, but also getting them back through the property and uh showing the vendors there that they're working really hard to get the best result from the market uh in the current market.

Auction Day Psychology And Price Framing

SPEAKER_01 4:31

For you going into these grand finale moments where you're meeting the vendor, sometimes we've got to send the agent away while you have a conversation with the actual vendor. What signals or messages do you want to get across to the owner at this critical time?

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yeah, so at the critical time of auction day, um, we always remind the vendors we're on their side, we're there to facilitate a sale. Within reason, if we can get a figure that may not be doing cartwheels down the street, but we'll enable them to transact and move on with their purchase. Often they are working on a deadline, they've purchased elsewhere, they've got a settlement date, and they'd like to get the property sold on auction day. So we remind them we're there to facilitate sale. We'll do the absolute best. And we're and we know as well with the agents we work with, a lot of these agents are very skilled auction agents. They've done the work there to set it up for that conversation. As a third party, we can sort of add, um, I guess talk about perhaps some case scenarios and/or another auction that we may have had that day that may be relevant to them, that's transacted, which got close to the price the vendor was hoping for. And quite often I like to talk to agents and vendors or agents to have a conversation around terms of percentage. So for example, if you had a million-dollar property and the offer was or the bid was at 950,000, yes, it's a $50,000 adjustment, but it's 5%. It's 95% of the price. So for most of us, if we get 95%, not just in real estate being life, we're doing well. So that 5% adjustment or could be a 2% adjustment. So having conversations in terms of uh percentage can be very powerful. Also, when you're having conversations with buyers, talking to buyers in short amounts, so take me from 950 to 960. When you have your conversation with a vendor, $950,000, Mr. and Mrs. Vendor, I've now got an offer for you of $960,000, which is unconditional. What would you like to do? So good. And words is everything.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Yes. I often speak about this at the complete salesperson course that when an owner says no to an offer, they are now the highest bidder. They've just bought the property back. Because you can't release something unless you let someone have it. So when the owner says no, it's sold to you, no stamp duty this time around, but you're not going anywhere. Not that you can phrase it that way, but there is a reality in saying no to an offer makes you the highest bidder. And if you mentioned that percentage, which I really loved, but if that person is no longer there tomorrow and it goes for another 10 grand less, you've increased your loss. You haven't protected your gain. And I think a lot of owners don't understand that.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Most vendors, particularly in the the astute markets or in the eastern suburbs, and and uh if they're an astute vendor and they've been through the auction process before, they have some flexibility, they're not rigid on price. And for the agents, I think just delivering the result. But sometimes as an auctioneer, we can add that third-party uh element in there or that conversation.

Bidding Increments And Breaking Ceilings

SPEAKER_00 7:29

If the bidding has stalled and the reserves at $2 million and the the bid is at $1,980,000, and we want to get it. Sound like full flow there. We're gonna call it on the market. Um sometimes just that slight adjustment, which you're talking at 20k 1%, you know. So just that 99% of again, what what you're hoping for, Mr. Bisman. If we were to call on the market, it's reading the play and reading the situation. I believe these underbidders are gonna come again. And what quite often happens is we go well past that two million, but it's that glass ceiling figure to break through that two million barrier. No one wants to go there first. Like the hardest bid we get is the opening bid because nobody wants to be first, like the dance floor. No one wants to dance first in front of everyone on the dance floor. So once you have somebody that breaks through and then and then it's called on the market or we that we are selling the property, once people know they're playing for keeps and we are selling. You say that once, well, we are selling. We are selling. Once they know we are selling and uh it's going to be sold, if they don't bid again, they're gonna miss out on this property. It's a very different auction. It's a very different auction once the key players know that it's going to be sold. And um, we see that time and time again where you think it's petered out, and it's like tipping a little bit of fuel on a fire, and it just goes again and it ignites, and those results can be 2.2, 2.3 million, 2.5 million. And where did that come from? Because they knew that if they didn't bid again, it's going to be sold.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

I was watching Damien do an auction for a commercial building uh down in Double Bay, and the digital bidding was on at the same time, but they'd set the minimum increments to a million dollars. So you're watching this thing, and I think it went for 52 from memory. But if you're about to make another offer, big breath because but they were that was the signal as well of yeah, we're not playing small here. This is we're gonna have a serious purchaser that goes ahead with it.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Yep, yep, absolutely. And and as an auctioneer, we can decide the increments, and Damien's very skilled at that. Uh, ASA, or all the auctioneers that um you know work with Cooley in knowing the amount to increase the bid by and to hold the bidding, to keep it at a level that's going to move you to value, and also then if we are at a point where, and or depending on price point, that it's relevant to that price, relevant to that price point, the increments in which we're increasing, um, and that the buyers have got the capacity. If we know through the agents and the communication we've had from the agents that we're likely to head here in price, we know that we're going in 50k bids because we know that we're at early twos and we're likely to hit towards the mid-twos rather than shortening our stride to $10,000 bids because we know that there's depth from the buy pool. Um, so that that uh agent auctioneer relationship is very important and the conversations we have with the agents to uh know exactly the the relevant buyers that are in the in the bidding pool and where they're going to be likely landing uh on the day of auction is good because it gives us a sort of insight and then we know where we can increase and um as Kenny Rogers said uh we know when to hold them, when to fold them.

Why Auctions Matter And A Life Story

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Final question for you. How long have you been auctioneering?

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Uh 27 years. Wow. Yeah. And I've seen you do some of these massive acreages out in Dural, then you're out in the eastern suburbs. It's quite fascinating, the variety. Yes. What's your most favourite thing about the auction process?

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Look, I think my favorite thing about the auction process is probably twofold. It's probably the elation of the buyers when they secure their home, just the the joy and the pure excitement and adrenaline. And then also on the flip side of that, the elation of the vendors when they get a great result. Um, I think just seeing the the pure joy and excitement that I've seen auctions deliver half a million, a million dollars over expectations, like changing lives. That's um, and one of the auctions that really uh you know resounds with is auctioned down in Canberra back in the early 2000s. And that if you think you're challenged in life, this gentleman was both blind and deaf uh selling a property, and uh we had a reserve of $400,000 and the property sold for $420,000. That extra $20,000 mean he could go overseas for the first time with his family, and uh he was so elated. I remember him picking up the principal at the time off the ground and uh just with pure joy and excitement, and um to see that in someone and how it can change lives um is really amazing. Um, and look, I think it is a privilege what we do. Like uh I remember when Damien gave me this tie, uh the cooley tie, and uh in a nice box, and um you know, with with such sort of I guess reverent respect to the art of auction, and um I've come from you know family growing up in wool auctions and livestock auctions. I've been around auctioneering all my life, and from 95 I was doing livestock auctions, so uh then transitioned into real estate in 98. And with a good auction, uh, it is that atmosphere, it's that excitement, it's the human engagement that you see that and an adrenaline that you can't be created elsewhere in real estate. And we come off the back of a good auction day, and your adrenaline's really high. You'd be like Robbie Williams. It is like Robbie Williams stepping off stage. Yes, it is. It's uh yeah, it's it's a great pleasure to uh work with the agents, the vendors, and the buyers. Um,

Wrap-Up From The New Studio

SPEAKER_00 12:46

yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Well, we'll thank you so much for appearing on We Are Selling in our brand new studio. We've had a an amazing group of people through today. And but it's great to have the street level, you're there in the auction, you've seen what's happened. And for our audience, thank you for joining us. And we'll see you again in the future. Thank you.