Everything Agents Need to Know About Timed Auctions with Jake Mackenzie

We explain how to run a compliant, effective timed auction and what agents must have in place before going live.

• understand that a timed auction is legally an auction and governed by state legislation
• ensure a licensed auctioneer oversees the process, even though it’s digital
• set a starting bid that opens the auction, separate from the reserve
• establish minimum bid increments to control momentum and buyer behaviour
• secure a signed reserve letter before launching the auction
• register all bidders in line with legislative requirements
• upload and display contracts, reports, terms, and compliance documents
• use the platform’s timer flexibly to shorten or extend the auction when needed
• communicate actively with buyers and vendors throughout the campaign
• leverage digital notifications, follower tracking, and bid visibility to drive engagement

A practical guide to running timed auctions that combine legal compliance, smart pricing strategy, and digital efficiency to sell property faster in a changing market.

Hosted by Lee Woodward Training Systems

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Transcript

Lee Woodward: 0:03

Hello, Realtair community, and welcome to today's program on how to conduct a timed auction. Now, the timed auctions are having great impact in our marketplace, especially with the changed market. But as we see the emails come in and the questions, we want to make sure we clear up any confusion that goes on with a timed auction and the checklist that you should be following in order to get the property live, but still remembering the auction has started. And no different to an auction day, the day of auction, you've got everything in place, all your reserve letters done, copies of the contract on display. It's the same thing. So to do that, I'm going to bring in one of our very own auctioneers and part of our team here at RealTare, and that is Jake MacKenzie. Jake, welcome to the program.

Jake MacKenzie: 0:50

Thanks, Lee. Always a pleasure to be here and share some knowledge about some exciting timed auctions in this space. But yeah, lovely being here.

Lee Woodward: 0:57

Jake, when we look at the impact that the timed auctions have had, uh there's been some great conversations that a starting bid actually starts the auction, no different to the auction day. Just for our viewers today, what do you see as the difference between a timed auction and a normal auction, in your own view as an auctioneer?

Jake MacKenzie: 1:18

The number one thing to remember is probably the second word is auction. This is an auction. For all intents and purposes, governed by auction legislation in your state or territory. And all agents that are running these need to be aware that it is an auction. Just because it is on a screen and it's digital and we're not calling out bids on the front property or on the front lawn of the property, you need to be aware that it is an auction. So there are certain boxes that you do need to tick in terms of legislation, and of course, some certain auction strategy which we need to take into account before and also whilst running the campaign.

Lee Woodward: 1:50

Jake, another question we get a lot is do I have to have the auctioneer available at all times? If we look at a standard auction, a normal auction, the auctioneer turns up on the day, performs the auction on behalf of the agent, but they may still have a check-in with the owner at some point prior to auction day. Whereas in a timed auction, the auctioneer must facilitate the auction, oversee it, and then also be available on that last day of the timed out auction just in case anything's required. Jake, you've been doing the timed auction for quite a lot of our members. What is it you do and what do you find important about that role? Because you're not physically there at the house every day of the week. How does it work?

Jake MacKenzie: 2:32

What do we need to know? We we are the auction. We're the auctioneer, we're the licensed professional on this. We're not to be expected to be with the agent for the week or two weeks or three weeks that it's running, but we do need to make sure we know what's going on. And that's everything from the starting bid or opening bid that the auction will actually have, and again, that varies depending on the state, to actually accepting and approving the minimum bidding increment. So what size bids do we actually want to allow the bidders to place and what's the minimum increment at which we want the auction to move along? And that's where the strategy comes into it, all the way down to that timer, timing out in the final five minutes to actually encouraging all of the bidders to bid, overseeing it right down to the equivalent of the hammer falling or that timeout, and then doing our contracts and deposits at the end. So still the licensed auctioneer, still a professional that's advising the agent throughout the process. Depending on how long that's run for, there'll obviously be the starting point when that's getting set up, and an agent should definitely engage a licensed auctioneer in that, but also getting the auction going and then continually checking on that, you know, every day once that auction is up and running, communicating with the agent and making sure that it's all running uh efficiently and to code as well.

Lee Woodward: 3:45

And Jake, we've had some great examples where some of the agents are licensed auctioneers and they are facilitating their own timed auctions. We are seeing that out in the marketplace. However, there is a benefit of having a different person as your auctioneer because it's a different voice, a different conversation. And I know when you ring through to an owner and you're having your chat about the marketplace, you're not the agent who signed it up. That always happens on auction day in normal auction, that you've got that benefit of two people. Uh, the digitization of that, that technique is still a benefit to have there if that phone call or conversation is going to be made. But I I think it's really important for our our listeners watching this right now that it is an auction. There is no difference. It's just started on day one. And when that paddle is passed out on day one, if the purchaser that you have engaged is the highest bidder, they're going to own the property. And Jake, we've had some great examples of this where uh recently with Paul McAllister, there were there was a top bidder on the property. It hadn't hit reserve yet, but um it was on the market and they were the strongest bidder, and that bidder wanted to withdraw their bid. Paul said, no, you can't withdraw your bid. You are our top bid right now. What's your view on that, Jake? Because people think, oh, because it's digital, you can just walk away.

Jake MacKenzie: 5:07

Something that can happen. This is a slow burn auction. So we are giving the buyers a little bit more time to make a decision and also commit to the property. There's strengths in that because we can invite more buyers in to the auction, but also there is the chance that a buyer might say, Hey, I don't want to bid that anymore. Like a normal auction on a Saturday, a bidder can actually ask to retract their bid if they want, but it is at the auctioneer's discretion. They have to actually approve that. So just because they've put the bid in doesn't mean that they can leave it for a week and pull it out. They need to actually get that permission to do it. And of course, what comes into it then is what's actually best for the seller in that case. If there's another bidder that's close by, is it best to retract it? Are they going to complete anyway? And that's to the point that you brought up before. Just because a licensed agent may also be a licensed auctioneer, do they have the experience and the skill in an auctioneer environment to actually make that call that's going to be right for their vendor?

Lee Woodward: 6:03

Let's hop on to screen because so many of our people have got the sell platform now. Uh, some of them think administration can do it all for them, but it's great to know how to do it.

Jake MacKenzie: 6:12

Now, this is super important to remember. When we start the auction, it is life. That is the equivalent of an auctioneer saying, ladies and gentlemen, open bidder offer, where do we go? Where do we start? So we need to make sure that we've got a number of boxes ticked before we start that auction. I wouldn't just start it right now unless I had those boxes ticked, which I'll take you through that in a moment. So let's just say that we come across to our little calendar. Of course, we can choose the date and the time of when we want that actually to start and take place. The finish time, again, being the benefit of running it as an online auction or a digital auction, we can have that as short or as long as we need. And it can also be changed. So if we have bidders that are red hot ready to go, why make them wait? We can bring it to a head sooner. Or if we know that we need a little bit more time to invite more buyers in, we can actually extend that out using the screen as well. So you can customize that to your campaign and however long or short you want that. The starting bid, very important part of the campaign, and again, very dependent on your state or territory's legislation. So starting bids need to be in a specific place. This is where you'll actually need your auctioneer's advice and your auctioneer's uh input on this because it is actually the auctioneer that sets the starting bid. Just like if I was at an auction on the lawn on a Saturday, as the auctioneer, I would be the one that deems where that starting bid is actually appropriate to start. So you need to have that conversation with your vendors, with the agent, with the auctioneer to actually get that starting bid in the right place. Similarly, here our minimum bidding increment. So this is the absolute minimum that we want to accept for subsequent bids. Bidders can bid as much as they like, but this is the minimum. So traditionally, it starts off at a larger increment and then decreases towards the end of the auction to keep the interest going. And it can also be changed quite easily throughout the auction. So for the demo today, our listing URL, of course, a link back to the property on your website, images, our vendors information, and our contract. And again, linked up to a CRM, this will all drag through for you. So I'll just hit go on our demonstration property here today, and that will actually activate our timed auction. And we now have our landing page, which we can share our link via the share and QR code over here for followers and registrations on the auction, and where we can actually manage the bids and manage the auction once this is ready to go.

Lee Woodward: 8:44

If this was a normal auction on the day, auction day, we're getting ready to go down to the property. We'd make sure we'd have a contract so that's on display, multiple copies of that if people want to see that on the day. We'd also have our reserve letter signed of what the owner is prepared to take for the property. Everything else we would need in compliance, such as disclosures or anything like that, all in line because the auction is today. In a timed auction, the auction is today. If we're going to hit launch or activate to the marketplace, can we just go through those mandatory things we need to have in place? As I think some people have had the thought of, oh well, it's not for it doesn't time out for two and a half weeks, so we don't have to worry about all that till then. Two and a half weeks, the auction is started now.

Jake MacKenzie: 9:34

So what do they need to know? Lee, number one, reserve letter. We can't legally start an auction without a reserve. So we need that minimum price at which the vendor will accept and will actually sell the property. The benefit of having a timed auction, which has run over a series of days or weeks, is we then have time to actually educate the vendor around where that reserve may need to be amended to. So a lot of agents think I've got to set a reserve, it's day it's day one of this campaign. How do I know where that is? Of course, we take into account buyer's feedback, the vendor's expectations, and the agent's estimate of what the property will sell for, and that's what usually sets that reserve. It can then be adjusted, and we know we can adjust reserves throughout the course of the auction campaign. But we need that signed off before that clock can actually start and we can open the auction. The other thing we need is registered bidders. So bidders need to be registered in New South Wales, for instance. Being a digital platform, it is the only way in which we can let bidders into the timed auction. So we need to make sure that we do have our bidders registered. Whether there's other pieces of paperwork or documentation required for that, authorities to bid or company registrations, our platform can help with that as well.

Lee Woodward: 10:48

But you can load a document into there, such as the contracts. Are the contracts downloadable and on display? You can have a building report, a pest report, the terms and conditions. For compliance, you are safer to have it all loaded in there.

Jake MacKenzie: 11:03

Is there any other way you could display those? The number one thing that agents need to be aware of is the legislation that does govern their state or territory. So RealTare is a platform to host the digital auction or the digital sale. However, our users, which are the agents and auctioneers, need to be aware of the rules in which they're bound by. We provide some great helps and hints and uh tips for this, such as you said, displaying documents there as well, but always communicate with your buyers. And we know as agents, the more communication, the better with our buyers and with our vendors. So no surprises on auction day, no surprises on digital auction day, making sure that contracts have been sent out, terms and conditions are readily available for our buyers, although we do send them on successful approval. Uh, an agent's job is still to make sure that the buyers know that if they are successful at the end of the auction, what that requires in most cases, signing a contract and paying a deposit.

Lee Woodward: 11:58

So, Jake, what an interesting conversation. It's day one, and we might be running for three weeks as a timed auction, and there's no rules or hard and fast on that. Uh, and as you mentioned before, you can bring the time back if you've got an incredible offer and the owner wants to accept it, but everyone gets notified from that. But just in that section you went into there, where we're doing the reserve, the owner has to have this conversation with you on day one. And you mentioned that it can be changed, but we've now got a technique where, okay, if we were setting reserve today, what would it be? And then we've got to have a conversation of a starting bid. There's gonna be quite a discrepancy between those two numbers, Jake. I would imagine at this early day one, because the owner's saying, you know, I don't know, we haven't had any feedback yet. You're right, but because the auction has started due to compliance, we need to have these things in place. The starting bid is purely a starting bid. It's not the reserve. I'm not saying it's something you would accept, but it's got to be tight to that range of saleability, as we wouldn't want to do anything untoward to the consumer thinking, oh, it started here and it went there. Now, as we know, in nature, oxygens can go way over the reserve. And sometimes a starting bid in the market we're in right now, it's quite stabilized. But what's been your experience out there in the marketplace, Jake, with an owner who's got their thoughts on value and they've got to sign the reserve, yet the starting bid needs to let our consumer know where the property is going to be starting from?

Jake MacKenzie: 13:35

I guess it's one of the toughest jobs for an agent is aligning the buyer and the vendor in the same space, and what a great tool to do that with. The reserve uh is and always will be a private figure between the vendor and the agent in what they will actually let the property go for. It's then the agent's job to generate the interest with the buyers and actually prove who is the best offer, who is the best bid on the day. So there's a level of professionalism that comes into that, and of course, we do need to take into account the legislation that's there. An auctioneer, for instance, in New South Wales has the ability to accept or decline a bid that's not in the vendor's best interest. So that's where their professional opinion comes in. The best thing I can liken it to is on a Saturday at a live auction, I would discuss with the agent where's the market feedback been and where are the offers potentially been prior to auction, where is the reserve that the vendor is after, and we would formulate a starting bid. And it's usually in and around the feedback in order to get the auction going and work towards that reserve price. There are a few things in which an agent can do and an auctioneer can do, but of course we're always working towards our vendor's best interest and getting the buyers where they need to be to purchase the property. Well, what a good example.

Lee Woodward: 14:50

Nothing to do with timed auctions, your work on the weekend, Jake. Give us an example of a property that was auctioned on the weekend, where the starting bid was for those properties and where it did and what the reserve was.

Jake MacKenzie: 15:03

I had it one on the weekend where the reserve was 820,000, five registered bidders, and the feedback had been 750 to 800. So of course, reserve a little bit above where the feedback has been, which has been traditional in this market. Our starting bid from the floor was 750,000 on that property, was actually a little bit lower than what I wanted to start it at. However, we managed to get to 850,000 and sell the property. So it shows really that tight range of 100,000. And at an auction, that's not too many bids to get there, but it can show where our starting bid was at 750, our reserve at 820, and our eventual selling price at 850.

Lee Woodward: 15:46

What a great example in some feedback from our agents that have been using this. Jake, we've just had uh a property sold in Port Macquarie that had been on the market for 12 months, and this was uh one of the podcasts that we did on the We Are Selling Show. And it'd been on the market for 12 months, it'd been to normal auction, it had been for sale and didn't sell. The owners agreed they would give anything a go, and they did a timed auction. And the starting bid was the reason the buyer in a marketplace that we're in right now understood the property, but the property actually sold. Timed auction just allowed this to come about because it takes the pressure off the owner and the buyer. The owner was, let's say, uncomfortable with the starting bid. They were concerned that that was going to be too low, but they made the minimum increments $50,000. So suddenly you've got that control in a timed auction that, okay, there's a starting bid. We don't want anyone to come in below that. So the property can only go up from here. But if you are registering, the bidding increments is minimum of $50,000. That digital control uh throughout the campaign has been a great benefit to our agents.

Jake MacKenzie: 16:55

Lee, you'll also get on that too when buyers, just like at a normal auction, they'll talk to the agent. In this case, they'll ring and they'll say, Lee, I can see the minimum bid is fifty thousand. We can't do it. Our budget is only another 25 or 30. And in that case, we can easily adjust it, just like an auctioneer would would take that bid, but it really provides a flexibility to work with the buyers to get them to actually go to the top of their budget and pay the price that they're willing to pay for the property without just letting them go. So some really good tools and a great example around how you can actually bring the market to the property and even one that's been on the market for quite a long time.

Lee Woodward: 17:31

Well, Jake, I'm going to get you to go back to your screen and just take us through the final steps, what we would have to do to go live with a timed auction using RealTare Cell.

Jake MacKenzie: 17:44

Thanks, Lee. I call it the timed auction checklist. What do we need to actually go live with our timed auction? Of course, we need the property activated inside of Cell. That's number one. We need an auctioneer that's willing to oversee this as the professional auctioneer, as well as a starting time and a finishing time and a starting bid if you choose to put one, of course, to our state or territory's legislation. Once that's loaded and the property is created, before we are live, we need our documentation. So our reserve letters, our terms and conditions, if they need to be on display or sent or contract sent, everything that we would have for a normal auction on a Saturday. Once we've got all of that ready, we just need to share our listing via our share QR code or link, register our buyers, and of course display the property on RealTare and the documents if you like. We're then live, we're waiting for the auction to open, or if it's open there, we're waiting for it to count down and close. We're communicating with our buyers, we're communicating with our vendors and our auctioneers and agents and getting a sale together.

Lee Woodward: 18:46

So, Jake, we have just landed a buy dot RealTare site, but we might just go into some of the timed auctions that are live at the moment and have a look round there, Jake, and get your thoughts about the the display side of it and why it's important in the back end to go through that checklist as we did.

Jake MacKenzie: 19:03

Absolutely. So this is the digital shopfront for our agents. Once they have ticked display property on RealTare, you'll actually get published in the timed auction space. If we click into one, for example, here, we can actually see where it's up to. This is a live auction. The last bid was 655,000 by bidder number three. It's only had the one bid on it. If there were documents that were displayed, we could access them down here. Otherwise, we do have a link in this case to the property listing, but the start time and end time with our agents and auctioneers details down the bottom. So this is where a consumer can follow it. They can register to bid if they're interested and actually get involved right now on this timed auction.

Lee Woodward: 19:46

And with this particular one, Jake, you would only know if you register to bid if it's hit the reserve or not. What's the situation there? Correct.

Jake MacKenzie: 19:54

So if you register to bid, you can bid live. If you follow, you'll actually see what. I'm seeing on the screen here, which is the details around it. So if you don't follow or at least register your information as a buyer or consumer, you won't actually know what's going on with it. Of course, when a follower or a registration goes through, the agent can access that information first name, last name, email, and phone number of the registrations, or just the followers that are keeping an eye on it.

Lee Woodward: 20:21

And also, when you created the QR code before, Jake, that makes you land here, not at that front display. This is your real estate web business where people land, they can register, they can make an offer, they can bid. Because time sale and timed auction technically is the same for the platform. It's just you've entered auction conditions when you enter a timed auction versus the time sale. You are not under auction conditions. You could walk away, but the site's been facilitated or being used to facilitate all offer management. Well, Jake, that brings us to the conclusion of our session today, and I really want to thank you for going through the back end part of the tech. I think what's more important about today is the digital tool of sell facilitates the sale of a digital sale. However, for whichever state you are in, you must follow your current legislation and changes to legislation. The site isn't designed to be your legislation, it's designed to capture, hold everything that's happening around the offer management, exchange of contracts and deposit that is going on for your sale as a tool. But you are still the lead agent, and just as if we didn't exist and you were going out to an auction today, you would have everything in place, auction reserve letters done, as Jake took us through there. Jake, anything else you would like to add?

Jake MacKenzie: 21:47

Lee, great summary. The best thing about the timed auction, we have a saying here at RealTare, every day is auction day. Putting the power in the agent's hands to get their bidders there and ready today, if required. And that's the beauty of it. We're not waiting for Saturday at 3 p.m. on the lawn. A vendor's ready to sell, a buyer's ready to buy. Let's do it now. Let's do it digitally under auction conditions. I think a great wrap-up. Plenty of gold in today's interview. So thanks for having me along. Always a pleasure. Thank you. Great session.

Lee Woodward: 22:16

We look forward to having you on again in the future. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Lee. And that concludes another edition of the podcast We Are Selling. The Realtair platform of Pitch, Sign and Sell has had incredible impact on our agents and the marketplace. But this discussion that you've just gone through today is the future of real estate. To find out more about sell, please contact Realtair on 1300 367 412 or book a meeting with one of our sales professionals at Realtair.com. I'm Lee Woodward. Thank you for listening. See you next week.