Owner occupiers – $1.35m freestanding house in the inner west – ‘dummy bidders everywhere and our clients still saved a small fortune’

Anxious at the thought of bidding at auction and suspicious of the selling agent’s conduct during the marketing campaign, our clients, each working for multinational corporations, retained Curtis Associates to bid at a public auction.

Our clients’ suspicions were confirmed at the auction with our Principal identifying at least two people clearly engaging in the unlawful activity of dummy bidding. By controlling the auction process until the auctioneer’s announcement that the property was on the market, we eventually beat off the genuine bidders and purchased the property under the hammer for $1.267 million which was $86,000 less than our clients’ written bidding limit based upon their own due diligence and our analysis of recent comparable sales.These clients have since been a source of repeat and much referral business. Please note that we no longer provide a Bidding Only service.