In Paris, “no one is content material to be a spectator”, wrote Jean Cocteau. The good avant-garde dramatist and poet may need thought in another way if he’d stood on the spacious terrace of a selected residence on the town’s Rive Gauche.
From this rooftop eyrie within the unique seventh arrondissement, a single gaze takes in a number of the metropolis’s best-known landmarks. There’s the gilded dome of Hôtel des Invalides, remaining resting place of Napoleon Bonaparte; the ornate allegorical “Fames” on Pont Alexandre III; the shimmering glass roof of the Grand Palais — and the Eiffel Tower. The terrace itself is planted with lavender, sculpted boxwood and an avenue of roses; the perfume is as intoxicating because the view.
A Parisian couple has loved the vistas from the terrace of this stylish one-bedroom duplex residence since 2008. Now approaching their eighties, they’ve determined to promote and commerce for a ground-floor flat with a backyard. However fairly than advertising it with an property agent, the homeowners have determined to promote at a web based public sale. After six weeks of promoting and viewings, on July 10, at 5pm native time, bidding will begin at €7.5mn. An hour later, the digital hammer will come down and the residence — and people views — will go to the best bidder.
As soon as sometimes a mode of sale for distressed properties, auctions have grow to be a well-established mannequin for getting and promoting costly properties within the US, and now they’re gaining momentum in Europe. And plenty of latest launches are hoping to capitalise on a shift in notion.
“What was as soon as seen as a last-resort or distress-driven gross sales channel is more and more being embraced as a strategic, emotionally charged strategy to promote luxurious properties,” says Dr Daniel Langer, chief govt of the advisory consultancy Équité and govt professor of luxurious technique at Pepperdine College. “Identical to with purses or artwork, auctions at the moment are seen as a curated stage the place exclusivity and pace converge.”
The Parisian residence is being auctioned by Drouot.immo, a web based actual property public sale platform launched final yr by Drouot Immobilier, itself the actual property arm of Hôtel Drouot — France’s oldest and most venerable public sale home, the place landmark gross sales have included the estates of Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix and André Breton. Venteu, owned by Knight Frank, is one other high-end property public sale website that launched final yr.
“It’s emotional for the homeowners to be promoting, however they’ve gone down the public sale route as a result of they know that, on a set date, it can all be performed,” says Maëlys de Lummen, president of Drouot Immobilier.
Drouot.immo’s present tons embody a château within the Loire, a Provençal dwelling with its personal olive grove and a waterfront villa in Cannes. Most have beginning costs of very comfortably greater than €500,000 however there are exceptions, resembling a home in a Pyrenees village with a beginning worth of €299,000.
Of the 27 properties at the moment listed, 20 per cent had already been in the marketplace with an property agent and did not promote, says de Lummen. However for the numerous majority, public sale was the primary alternative, she says. “These sellers have distinctive properties, need a honest worth and to promote to credible consumers in a short time, with most transparency,” says de Lummen. “Auctions are a dynamic strategy to promote luxurious properties; a château or penthouse residence can commerce fingers as swiftly and publicly as a masterpiece [artwork].”
Difficult market situations undoubtedly have a component to play too. Within the second half of 2024, in accordance with Paris’s Chamber of Notaires, 12,220 properties have been offered within the metropolis — fewer than in the course of the first half of 2020, when pandemic-related restrictions largely froze the market. In London, the variety of $10mn property gross sales within the first quarter of 2025 fell by 37 per cent in contrast with the primary three months of final yr, in accordance with Knight Frank. This yr, London properties from Sotheby’s Worldwide Realty — one beforehand in the marketplace for £12.75mn — went beneath the gavel as a part of the UK launch of Sotheby’s Concierge Auctions’ “distinctive international properties gross sales”. Extra UK homes can be included in future auctions.
Patrons of top-of-the-market properties within the US aren’t, as but, displaying severe indicators of any Trump-related or financial jitters — Knight Frank says New York, Palm Seaside, Los Angeles and Miami noticed the best numbers of $10mn-plus gross sales globally within the first quarter of 2025, crushed solely by Dubai. However, transactions at this degree of the market are sometimes sluggish, with properties spending a median of 319 days in the marketplace in 2024, in accordance with analysis by Concierge Auctions.
The US public sale home is partly owned by Sotheby’s and is the largest participant in auctions of high-end actual property; it accepts solely the “prime 5 per cent” of properties submitted for consideration and claims an 85 per cent share of the worldwide market. Because it was based in 2008, gross sales have totalled greater than $4bn, throughout 46 US states and 35 nations.
Final yr, Concierge Auctions offered a number of properties value greater than $20mn, whereas UK property consultancy Allsopp offered a document £610mn of residential property at public sale, although a lot of this was on the decrease finish of the market. “Property auctions are a rising class for properties priced above $5mn,” says Chad Roffers, chief govt and co-founder of Concierge Auctions.
Pace is the important thing attraction for sellers choosing on-line property auctions, says Charlie Smith, managing companion of Venteu, which largely sells properties costing over €1mn in European vacation locations; for every property, the corporate sometimes goals to generate 500 inquiries, 15 or extra viewings and three to seven registered bidders.
“Homeowners typically say to us that point is as invaluable to them as another commodity,” Smith says. Purchasers are typically older, he provides, and are promoting a property that their household has outgrown, typically by the seashore or in a ski resort. Patrons, in the meantime, are usually youthful, sometimes of their thirties or forties, attracted by the possibility to see what others are ready to pay — which may be far lower than an property agent valuation. Final yr, Concierge Auctions offered an oceanfront property within the Hamptons generally known as La Dune for $89mn. It was the world’s most costly sale of 2024 — however nonetheless tens of hundreds of thousands lower than the unique $150mn asking worth.
Whereas websites resembling Drouot.immo construction auctions round a viewing window, registration interval and eventually the sale, in Smith’s expertise, round half of public sale consumers don’t view the properties in particular person. “They might be sitting at their desk in Washington DC, and have performed all of the digital excursions and had their attorneys do the due diligence, together with every thing from the cadastral plans to planning data and pest stories,” he explains. It’s not in contrast to shopping for a classic automobile at public sale, he provides.
Langer agrees that the elevated curiosity in property auctions is being led by a brand new, youthful era of prosperous consumers who’ve grown up with on-line gross sales and public sale platforms. “For them, auctions really feel acquainted, thrilling and environment friendly, whereas the standard sluggish, opaque [property] gross sales course of can typically really feel archaic,” he says. “The gamification of luxurious is not only accepted — for the following era, it’s anticipated.”
Individuals are a key purchaser demographic for Venteu — Smith says they accounted for about half of the curiosity in two properties just lately auctioned close to the town of Matera, in southern Italy (one among which offered for €1.95mn, €825,000 over its prime estimate). Time will inform whether or not a weaker greenback begins to place them off European actual property. Most different consumers are from northern and jap Europe; Swedish consumers are additionally a big presence — about 5 per cent of the consumer base.
As for the Paris residence, Drouot.immo says that by mid-June it had acquired curiosity from 70 folks throughout the globe: in addition to French, Belgians and Swiss, there have been these from Britain, the US, Lebanon, Brazil, Mexico and Dubai. And one from Monaco.
Property auctions aren’t with out controversy — lawsuits within the US have wrangled with claims that pretend bidders have been used to drive up costs. And a profitable sale just isn’t assured. Two London properties auctioned at Sotheby’s in Could — beforehand in the marketplace at £8mn and £3mn — acquired opening bids deemed too low by the sellers, who determined to withdraw from the public sale.
Langer says that whereas auctions are a rising market (at the very least when it comes to new gamers), the sector is more likely to stay area of interest. “For some, it’s not simply concerning the transaction, however way more concerning the drama of the second,” he provides.
“It’s a course of you possibly can watch in actual time,” agrees de Lummen. “The bidders are nameless so that you don’t know who you’re bidding towards — even we don’t know which of the registered consumers has gained till the top. Auctions have every thing: pleasure, pressure, ardour and envy. They’re a spectacle.”
Discover out about our newest tales first — comply with @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
