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Comment by fratlas | Hacker News Reader

A designed process, very efficient at extracting the maximum price out of a stressful situation. It's a sad state of affairs in Australia right now.

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But it's an open process. That it's close to optimal efficiency isn't a bad thing.

Imagine the same level of stress, but you have to guess what the other buyers are bidding. Do you bid low and hope everybody else does? Bid high, but risk overpaying?

There are new systems to bid online, and over the course of a week. Much less stressful, no emotion and heat of the moment bidding. Nothing wrong with open bidding, all about the techniques used in person.

That still suffers from the stress at the end of the week.

Say an auction closes at 5pm Friday... I bod $500k on Wednesday. Somebody bids $501 Friday 4:50. I bid 502... they 503, right up to the last moment.

And if the site is like some online car auctions, any activity in the last 5 minutes extends the auction by another 5 minutes. So, 504... 505... and on up until somebody walks away.

A home purchase is the largest single thing most people will ever buy. It's going to be emotional, even if the buyer manages to stay calm.

In my experience it was less emotional than in person auctions I've attended. I knew my limit and stuck to it, there was no agent talking me into bidding higher.

That's what I was thinking. In theory it should be a better system. Submitting a bid significantly over the asking price and then losing to another higher secret bid is very disheartening.

They should use a Vickrey auction. Then you can bid very high and only pay as much as the 2nd highest bid.

Can you hire professionals to do the bidding on your behalf? That would be ideal. Get some a wolf in sheep's clothing. Some old gran who is actually a bidding shark.

There's been a bunch of issues, though. When I grew up in Australia, there were regular news/investigative reports of auctioneers pulling bids from trees, etc., to kick the price up a bit. Not without risk, but definitely possible.

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