James Hayashi

We are very blessed in the markets that we work in.

Best in the world, I'd say.

Yeah, look, we saw a downturn in stock listings coming to market during the first lockdown.

Things tightened up because there was a lot of unknowns and uncertainty about what the market was actually going to do.

But in the second lockdown, things kept on business as usual.

So the volumes didn't actually decrease.

I mean, there is a shortage of stock in the market at the moment, as we've all seen.

But in terms of auction listings, I think the properties were on the market, the vendors were motivated, and they obviously wanted to capitalize on the high buyer demand.

Auction was the best method of sale to making sure that you can create an even playing ground for all the buyers to compete against, but also maximizing the price for your vendors too.

Yeah, look, I think that everyone needs to understand that the agents and auctioneers are there to do a job.

People can miss out and obviously they may have been burned in auctions in the past and they take that experience to the current auction they're going to bid on.

So, you know, there have been times where people have been disrespectful.

there's an arrogance, people thinking that they know better than the agent, the auctioneer, not saying that we know everything, but it's having that professional respect.

You wouldn't go into your accountant's office and start heckling them or making silly comments.

I remember one auction that I had where one of the bidders started playing Harley Davidson videos, like motorbike videos really loud on his phone to disrupt the auction.

So I just found that was completely rude.

And then also, in terms of the bid

protocol, understandable that the buyer wants to buy the property as cheap as possible, but we can't take $1,000 bids so early in the auction.

That typically happens at the tail end after you've exceeded the reserve or when things are slowing down.

appreciating that you do want to spend your $1,000, but we need to keep it in, say, a $25,000 rise.