How to choose between auction and private treaty when selling your house in 2026

When you sell by private treaty, taking the normal route that an estate agent uses, you get the largest possible audience and are generally able to obtain the highest price, but in 2026 this still involves months of waiting and there is a real possibility that the sale may fail before completion. In the case of an auction, although the fees are higher and the number of potential buyers is reduced, the hammer sale involves a binding exchange of contracts and the money comes a few weeks later. It is up to you whether the one option or the other is the more suitable one depending on the property in question, your deadline and your level of risk tolerance.

The comparison of the two routes with regard to speed, certainty, cost and price is given, using actual figures from 2026.

Speed compared - weeks against months

Even a successful private treaty sale proceeds at a slow pace. According to industry monitoring, the average period between listing and completion is about 207 days. After an offer has been accepted, the conveyancing process alone means that a typical sale now takes approximately five months from the time of acceptance to completion. If you're asking yourself where those months are spent, our guide on how long conveyancing takes explains the various legal stages.

The auction covers the entire process. The contracts are exchanged when the hammer falls and the work is then completed on a set date, usually 28 days afterwards. If you add three or four weeks for preparing the catalogue and the legal package before the auction, the whole sale can be carried out within two months.

The fall-through problem and certainty at auction

A flaw with private treaties is that the buyer is not committed until the transaction takes place. According to Quick Move Now's full-year figures, 26% of the sales which had been agreed in 2025 collapsed before completion, the main reasons being changes of mind on the part of the buyers, mortgage difficulties and problems with the survey. Each sale that fails results in you losing several months and usually incurs a new batch of legal fees.

When someone wins at an auction and then walks away, they lose a deposit of 10%, which is one of the reasons why they usually don't do so. Auctions are better than any other method when it comes to providing certainty.

You are also protected on the downside since you set a reserve price with the auctioneer, namely the confidential minimum below which the property will not be sold, thus preventing a quiet room from being forced to give the property away. The guide price that is published is then at or close to the reserve in order to attract bidders.

A worked example of the cost

You do not get free auction certainty. A typical commission for auctions in 2026 is about 2-3% plus VAT on the sale price, together with an entry or catalogue fee of approximately £300 plus VAT and a legal pack as well. In comparison, the average fee charged by an estate agent on a sole agency basis is 1.42% including VAT.

If the sale is worth £250,000, at an auction with a commission of 2.5% you would have to pay £6,250 plus VAT, that is £7,500, together with an entry fee of £300 which amounts to £360 when VAT is added, making a total of £7,860 before the legal pack is taken into account. When using an estate agent at a rate of 1.42% including VAT, the fee comes to £3,550. In this case, the auction method costs £4,310 more than the agent route, the amount equivalent to the price of a guaranteed exchange and a 28-day completion. Regardless of the method chosen, conveyancing is still required, and at an auction the legal pack has to be prepared and paid for before the catalogue is made available.

Price - it depends on the property

The idea that 'auction means a discount' is beginning to seem outdated. According to auction data provider EIG, about half of houses and flats were sold within 10% of the guide price over the last five years, and properties that require renovation tend to do better when sold through competitive bidding than they would via an agent, since the room is full of investors all asking for the same kind of work. On the other hand, a very clean family home in a quiet street is generally able to get a better price through a private treaty, in which owner-occupiers pay for the finishing work.

The auction market is in good shape, which is of benefit to sellers; in 2025 approximately 29,000 lots were sold raising £5.87 billion and, in early 2026, sales volumes were nearly a fifth higher than in the previous year, so the pool of bidders is large.

Which route fits which seller

1) If speed and certainty are more important than spending the last few thousand pounds, then the auction should be chosen; typical examples include properties that have been inherited or involved in probate, houses that require repairs, tenanted investments and any property that has already failed once or twice on the open market.

2) If the property is in good condition and you are able to accommodate a five-month timeline, then a private treaty should be chosen since getting the highest possible price is more important than having a fixed completion date.

There is also the current method of auction, which is an online auction acting as a kind of halfway house and having a schedule that lasts 56 days, involving the buyer paying a reservation fee; we examine the various fees and the step-by-step procedure in our separate article concerning the sale of your house at auction.

The bottom line

For a house priced at £250,000 in 2026, the auction process involves fees amounting to about £7,860 as compared to £3,550 if you use an agent, although it does exchange and complete in around 28 days instead of going through a five-month period with a 26% fall-through risk. In either case, you'll need to employ a solicitor at the auction before you put the property on the market, so it's important to get comparative quotes for conveyancing early on and have the legal work ready to proceed in accordance with your schedule.