Missed Out at Auction? How to Bounce Back!

If you’re trying to buy at auction—especially if it’s for your future home—there’s a good chance you’re already highly emotionally invested before auction day. You’ve pictured your lifestyle there, spent money on due diligence reports and contract reviews, and mapped out exactly what you’re willing to pay.

But here’s the truth: auctions are unpredictable even for a Buyer’s Agent. No one knows all the cards in play:

• The Owner holds the reserve price card—the number at which they’ll actually sell.

• The Sales Agent knows who’s planning to bid and might have a sense of their budgets.

• The Auctioneer has a strategy, but not a full read on personalities or bidding styles.

• And each Buyer is the only one who truly knows how far they’ll stretch (and sometimes even they don’t know until they’re in the moment).

So when an auction doesn’t go your way, it’s easy to feel disheartened.

Most buyers walk away feeling:

• Frustrated by the gap between the price guide and the final sale price (accepting this early makes Sydney house-hunting a lot less painful!)

• Misled by the sales agent about where the property would sell

• Confused about what they can now actually afford

But missing out at auction is also the perfect chance to take stock.

If you could have afforded the property, but didn’t believe it was worth what it sold for, you may not be meeting the market where it sees value.

If you stopped at your maximum affordable price and weren’t the highest bidder, here are your next steps:

• If you’d already made too many compromises and truly have no more budget, your brief is likely unrealistic—time to adjust criteria, or risk missing the market entirely.

• If the property had extras you don’t need (two parking spaces instead of one, bigger land size, freestanding vs semi, etc.), then even if you missed out by $50k–$100k, you’re probably still in the market—you just don’t need all the bells and whistles.

• If you missed out by $20k and everything about that home matched your brief (location, aspect, size, condition), it’s time to reassess expectations. This property just set a new benchmark. 

The key is to be objective in this assessment and be aligned with your partner about what compromises you’re willing to make.

Your brief might be tight and challenging, but if it’s not impossible, hang in there. The market does shift (usually upwards, though there are downturns), so unless you can out-save the Sydney market, waiting it out isn’t often a winning strategy.

One final piece of advice… avoid auctions if you can. They’re designed to push buyers to their maximum limit, and in my experience, 90% of the time buyers would do better securing the property beforehand at a fair price—rather than getting caught up on the day and paying top dollar.

Spring is in full swing and I’m the busiest I’ve ever been—helping more clients and navigating this tricky market with them.