Key takeaways for sellers
- Auction gives you certainty; private treaty gives you control. An auction ends on a set day with a buyer who can't walk away. Private treaty takes as long as it takes, usually with conditions attached and a cooling-off window afterwards.
- At the fall of the hammer, it's done. A winning auction bid is binding immediately — no cooling-off, deposit paid on the day.
- If it passes in, the sale isn't over. When bidding stops below your reserve, the agent normally takes the highest bidder aside and negotiates with them first, before the property goes back on the market at a listed price.
How does selling by auction work?
Buyers bid in public on a set date. If the highest bid meets your reserve, it sells then and there. Below your reserve, the property is “passed in” and usually moves straight into negotiation with the highest bidder.
The appeal is that it ends. There's a date in the diary, and at the fall of the hammer the buyer is committed — no finance clause, no building and pest condition, no cooling-off. Auctions tend to work best where demand is strong or the property is genuinely hard to price.
How does selling by private treaty work?
You advertise a price and negotiate offers privately, one at a time. Offers usually come with conditions attached — subject to finance, to a building and pest inspection, or to the buyer selling their own place first — and the buyer gets a cooling-off window after signing.
You keep more control over timing, and there's no public moment where the property visibly fails to sell. It suits most standard homes in steady markets.
How do you choose between them?
Your agent will have a view, and it's usually worth hearing. But the two methods produce genuinely different contracts: what the buyer can still walk away from, when the deposit is paid, and how long you wait before the sale is actually yours.
Whichever way you go, the contract needs to be right before the campaign starts — the terms are much harder to change once a buyer is in front of you.