At its Real Estate Auctioneering Conference, the RICS stated that 1.9% of residential transactions through sales were at auction, which is the same rate as 10 years ago.

Richard Auterac, Chairman and Auctioneer at Acuitus and Chair of RICS Real Estate Auction Professional Group, admitted it had been a struggle to increase volume.

“To truly understand how we can grow our business we need to start off by knowing where we are growing it from.

“It doesn’t look too good. 1.9% of the residential market transactions are through sales at auction, which is still the same as 10 years ago.”

During a panel discussion as to why the figure had remained stagnant, Andrew Binstock, Director and Auctioneer at Auction House London, felt the industry was still fighting a continuous battle against the idea of going to estate agents first.

“The only way we can get the percentage up to a more sensible market share is just to get everyone to understand auction purchasing.

“There’s no point us fighting against each other, instead we need to [collaborate] and fight against every single estate agent in the high street who are dealing [with] stupidly high valuations which they can never possibly achieve.

“When we go in with our very sensible suggestions of where a guide or a reserve should be set to achieve maximum price, of course they are going to look stupid against an estate agent’s valuation.”

Phillip Arnold, Managing Partner of Phillip Arnold Auctions, agreed that awareness needed to be raised, adding: “There needs to be [a] promotion of what we do and getting out there what we do.

“Some people understand it, but there are still plenty who have no idea about it.”

Meanwhile, Robin Rathore, Founder of Bamboo Auctions, saw technology as one of the solutions to lack of demand.

“Technology will help raise awareness of the auction industry and we can bring more things online and innovate.

“The property industry as a whole is fairly conservative and quite slow in terms of technology, but it is doing it.

“It’s the perfect time to ride the wave of that and embrace technology.”

Andrew concluded by coming up with a radical way of bringing auction purchasing into the limelight and at the forefront of the nation’s consensus.

“We should all come together sponsored by the big three or four firms and maybe make some sort of TV commercial type thing in the heart of ‘Coronation Street’ ad breaks where we can pitch to 17 million viewers.”

“Not one firm, but the industry as a whole as an auction educational piece which is RICS-led so no one firm gets any sort of preferential treatment to tell the millions of homeowners what we are all about.

“We can see how that drums up national interest in what we do.”