Be prepared to walk away

As Benjamin Franklin said, by failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.

Although it might take you weeks and weeks to prepare for an auction the reality is that the auction itself will be over in a matter of minutes. You still need to spend time preparing your figures, spending money on reports and hope for the best that you are going to win—but also be prepared to miss out if the price goes outside of your budget.

Ultimately you need to stick with your walkaway price; after all, you’ve done your homework and you know what that particular property is worth to you.

If you miss out on a particular auction, you need to accept that it wasn’t to be and realise that there is always another house. The sooner you move on from it, the faster you will find something better, and while it’s not nice to think of yourself as a loser in the auction, it’s much better to walk away to find a better home than overcommit to a property that you’ve become emotionally blinded by.

As the saying goes in real estate, ‘The money is made when you buy, not when you sell’. In other words, the price you pay for the property is the main factor to determine how much profit you make later on.

A list of recently sold homes in Brisbane, as you can see there is always going to be another home!