Urban Art Association

I'd be interested to hear about negotiating seller's fees: if you're selling a print with Christie's or Sotheby's (for the first time) at what expected price for the print could you have a chance of negotiating 0%? What sellers commission percentage could you get on a print that'll hammer for, say, £50 - 60k? Cheers

I'm definitely not an expert but happy to share my limited experience in general on here and you can PM me if you want to know anymore houseofarts.

I sold two items at auction approximately 18 months ago in two separate auctions, both at Phillips.
Was happy with the process but you obviously have less control over your return compared to a sale on here or via a gallery on commission who fix a price.

The items sold for £10-20k(one did better than expected, one a bit disappointing).
Your Banksys would sell for a lot more than my items and I managed to negotiate down to 5% commission fee on hammer price with a few polite emails so you should be looking at less than that I would have thought (maybe 3-5%?).

Like I say was happy enough and felt very safe and no chance of any comeback from buyer with condition reports etc. Money took a few weeks then dropped straight in account.

Selling at a gallery guarantees you an amount.....going to auction is probably more of a gamble but you can put in some safeguards and if you get lucky on a good day you can walk away with a packet. Good example of variation at the moment is a Flags last week sold for £44,100 and then one this week sold at auction for £35,000. Appreciate they mat be in different condition but clearly one seller did a lot better than the other.

OMGGGGGGGG Nearly fell off my seat!

I'd also be interested in any info that people are willing to share.

My prints are in the UK but I live outside of the UK.

Thanks in advance

A friend of mine got in touch with one of the bigger auction houses and they said
they would want 25% of the sales price.
This seems way to excessive .
Would anyone know if this is the norm.

your friend may be confusing sellers premium and buyers premium. Buyers premium will be circa 25% of hammer price. Sellers premium will be 10% or probably less depending on what you are selling etc.

10% is the standard for Christies, and I believe Sothebys. When I sold my Banksy last year I negotiated Christies down to 8%. I'm sure a good negotiator could do better on a very valuable Banksy, although I imagine there are quite a lot of people approaching them to sell at the moment.

I have no experience of other auction houses, but if I ever sell again I would always go for one of these two. The process is smooth, you know they have immense experience and they're very easy to deal with. The professionalism is first rate and I always felt like my print and my money were safe with them. When you're talking this amount of money, it's so important to have complete trust in the auction house. Christies gave me an option of several different auctions and recommended I wait for the Banksy-only one to achieve the best price. They never pressured me to sell. In fact, I think the time between initial approach and eventual sale was 18 months.

I approached My Art Broker before approaching Christies. Wasn't massively impressed. The person I spoke to was nice, but I didn't feel hugely confident in the process. The price they suggested they could achieve was less than half of what the print sold for at auction. They actually contacted me after the auction to see if my print was still for sale. I also spoke to Hang Up and wasn't keen on them. I felt very much like their goal was to sell as quickly as possible to secure their commission. There was no advice or discussion, just a price.

Thank you @whatilike for your insight!
Its great to hear about your approach and experience selling. Especialley since Im completely inexperienced in dealing with auction houses myself

I realize this discussion has been had before, but I was hoping to have opinions gathered for reference. It seems to be up for debate and may be helpful considering the market is constantly moving.

Banksy-value.com has been a good guide on current auction results but how does that reflect private sale pricing?

We are all aware that consignment with auction houses have various fees applied to the sale. Sellers fees of roughly 5-10%. Buyers fees reaching 34%. And then the hammer prices.

I have seen the following regarding fair private sale asking prices:
-Average hammer price.
-Average amount that buyer actually pays (hammer+fees).
-Average hammer price minus ~10% seller fee
-Somewhere in the middle of what buyer actually pays and what seller actually receives

I do understand that a seller can ask whatever they’d like and it may or may not sell. It would be nice to see others thoughts on this.

I’ve always thought auction results thrown out on here should mention:

1) Hammer - estimated seller fees (understanding these can be negotiated)
2) Hammer + all buyers fees

So a 100k print with 5% seller fee and 35% buyer fee would be shown as 95k Seller / 135k Buyer.

Private sales would likely happen somewhere between those two prices depending on demand, price direction, how much the lottery paid out that week, etc. Of course the middle price point would be 115k or roughly 15% lower than the “all in” price.

There should be a certain surety by buying through an auction house - your money is safe, they've done due diligence that it's not a fake, you'll actually get a print etc - that you don't get when buying in a motorway services for cash.

The auction house is adding value therefore so I'd expect to pay more there than I would privately when buying (and can see the reduced value if I'm selling)

They only have to add VAT to the Buyers Premium. Not to the price of the item itself.

Hammer 1000
BP 25% = 250
VAT 20% = 50
Total for buyer : 1300

So the VAT only adds 5% to the total.

A private sale does not include BP or VAT, so there is a 30% difference there.

In general BP is considered part of the value of the piece (although opinions differ here)
so a private sale of the example above might be 1100 - 1200....

There could be 4% ARR to be paid to the artist as well,

but that is generally not determined as value to the piece.

You could also argue the conscensus was that the item wasn't worth more then the hammer + fees.

My point is that the total price at auction is a good indication of an items value.
But have sold multiple items at (online) auction it can vary a lot.
I have sold exact same items for 120 that went for 500 the next week. Or vice versa......