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This story comes from Claudio Encina, real estate coach, speaker and trainer, who shares the key lessons he learned during an auction unexpectedly turning south.

  • Clear communication is imperative, especially when closing any sale or formal agreement.
  • If something goes wrong, remain calm and empathetic to your vendors and buyers

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 Transcript

Mark, is my hair okay? Claudio Encina, real estate coach to the stars. No, just kidding.

Yes, I was an agent once for a long time. I remember I was a leading agent in the Queens Park and Bondi Junction area. I had a big auction coming up and we had a new auctioneer come, who was going to do my auction that day.

I met up with him and we did the game plan for the auction. I was nervous as hell because at the end of the day I only had two people that were going to bid for the property.

Bidding started, was going really well and flowing, and then it got to that point where it just stopped just beneath the reserve. The auctioneer knew the reserve at the time and he said, “Claudio, we need instructions.”

Maybe it could have been my fault but I remember saying, “One minute.” I just shook my head like that and actually went to speak to the vendor to get instructions and see if we’re able to put it on the market.

The vendor was going, ‘No,’ but [the auctioneer] thought I said, “Yes, put it on the market.”

He put the hammer down but we didn’t actually reach reserve and I was like, “What’s going on here?”

There was an angry vendor and an angry buyer going, “What’s happening?” [We’re] trying to sort it out. Spoke to the buyer and I said, “Look, we haven’t actually quite reached the reserve.” He said, “Well, the auctioneer called it on the market, I’m the highest bidder. I’ve bought the property.”

I had to keep calm – as you hear those big t-shirts, keep calm – I thought, “Just keep calm, this will work out.” An hour later we ended up getting the vendor to agree.

The buyer came up another five or ten thousand, I can’t exactly remember what it was, but it put me in a position where I thought, you know, we need to get these instructions really clear because I could have easily lost the plot

It really made me think about, at that position and that time, just really remain calm and just keep everybody and show empathy to the buyer and show empathy to the vendor. Sometimes I think we should get to show a little bit of empathy. So that was my lesson at that time at that auction.