Most of the Mack Auction Company’s sales were postponed due to COVID-19, but the business still recently conducted a successful timed online land auction that came to an end on April 9.
After a week of online bidding, two quarters of pastureland in the RM of Golden West north of Stoughton were sold for $394,500, a price that definitely made the seller happy.
“The timed online auction worked really well. For land it was easy to do because (people) could go inspect the land without anybody around and it was a week-long auction only on the internet,” said Norm Mack, adding that this format ensured that there were no gatherings and no threats to the public’s safety.
Terry Payton’s land had surface lease revenue advantages and has previously been broke and farmed and then returned to grass. Being auctioned through an online platform, it had 170 bids and the final price exceeded the expectations.
“It probably was above average even, the land prices are still strong,” said Mack.
The online timed auction shouldn’t have been complicated for any of the buyers to participate in. All people had to do is go to www.mackauctioncompany.com, enter their name and a password, and bid.
“It’s very easy,” said Mack.
The online auction was different from a live one only in a sense that during a live one the auctioneer can control the incoming bids, while the automated system offers options to raise the bids only by a set amount of dollars. But Mack said the price for the land lot that they just sold would probably have ended up about the same if it sold through a live auction.
The company wrapped up another successful live auction season last fall and was just getting ready for spring sales when the pandemic hit the world, putting restrictions on gatherings and thus changing the auctioneers’ plans. So far, a number of planned sales were rescheduled for a later date.
“Due to the restrictions on crowd gathering we postponed our farm sales until a later date. And right now we are just waiting to see what’s going to happen over the next few weeks,” said Mack.
The company still has June sales advertised as live auctions but depending on the situation and also on customers’ needs they may either get postponed or changed to an online auction.
“It’s a collective agreement between us and our clients, our farmers, what they think is in their best interest,” said Mack, noting that if the restrictions are still in place they won't have any live sales since they don't want to put public safety at risk. “We’ll just have to sit and wait to see what we do with our auctions."
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