In Paris, “nobody is content to be a spectator”, wrote Jean Cocteau. The great avant-garde dramatist and poet might have thought differently if he’d stood on the spacious terrace of a particular apartment on the city’s Rive Gauche.
From this rooftop eyrie in the exclusive 7th arrondissement, a single gaze takes in some of the city’s best-known landmarks. There’s the gilded dome of Hôtel des Invalides, final resting place of Napoleon Bonaparte; the ornate allegorical “Fames” on Pont Alexandre III; the shimmering glass roof of the Grand Palais — and the Eiffel Tower. The terrace itself is planted with lavender, sculpted boxwood and an avenue of roses; the fragrance is as intoxicating as the view.
A Parisian couple has enjoyed the vistas from the terrace of this chic one-bedroom duplex apartment since 2008. Now approaching their eighties, they have decided to sell and trade for a ground-floor flat with a garden. But rather than marketing it with an estate agent, the owners have decided to sell at an online auction. After six weeks of marketing and viewings, on July 10, at 5pm local time, bidding will start at €7.5mn. An hour later, the virtual hammer will come down and the apartment — and those views — will go to the highest bidder.
Once typically a mode of sale for distressed properties, auctions have become a well-established model for buying and selling expensive homes in the US, and now they’re gaining momentum in Europe. And a number of recent launches are hoping to capitalise on a shift in perception.
“What was once seen as a last-resort or distress-driven sales channel is increasingly being embraced as a strategic, emotionally charged way to sell luxury properties,” says Dr Daniel Langer, chief executive of the advisory consultancy Équité and executive professor of luxury strategy at Pepperdine University. “Just like with handbags or art, auctions are now seen as a curated stage where exclusivity and speed converge.”
The Parisian apartment is being auctioned through Drouot.immo, an online real estate auction platform launched last year by Drouot Immobilier, itself the real estate arm of Hôtel Drouot — France’s oldest and most venerable auction house, where landmark sales have included the estates of Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix and André Breton. Venteu, owned by Knight Frank, is another high-end property auction site that launched last year.
“It’s emotional for the owners to be selling, but they have gone down the auction route because they know that, on a set date, it will all be done,” says Maëlys de Lummen, president of Drouot Immobilier.
Drouot.immo’s current lots include a château in the Loire, a Provençal home with its own olive grove and a waterfront villa in Cannes. Most have starting prices of very comfortably more than €500,000 but there are exceptions, such as a house in a Pyrenees village with a starting price of €299,000.
Of the 27 homes currently listed, 20 per cent had already been on the market with an estate agent and failed to sell, says de Lummen. But for the significant majority, auction was the first choice, she says. “These sellers have unique properties, want a fair price and to sell to credible buyers very quickly, with maximum transparency,” says de Lummen. “Auctions are a dynamic way to sell luxury homes; a château or penthouse apartment can trade hands as swiftly and publicly as a masterpiece [artwork].”
Tricky market conditions undoubtedly have a part to play too. In the second half of 2024, according to Paris’s Chamber of Notaires, 12,220 properties were sold in the city — fewer than during the first half of 2020, when pandemic-related restrictions largely froze the market. In London, the number of $10mn property sales in the first quarter of 2025 fell by 37 per cent compared with the first three months of last year, according to Knight Frank. This year, London properties from Sotheby’s International Realty — one previously on the market for £12.75mn — went under the gavel as part of the UK launch of Sotheby’s Concierge Auctions’ “exceptional global properties sales”. More UK houses will be included in future auctions.
Buyers of top-of-the-market homes in the US aren’t, as yet, showing serious signs of any Trump-related or economic jitters — Knight Frank says New York, Palm Beach, Los Angeles and Miami saw the highest numbers of $10mn-plus sales globally in the first quarter of 2025, beaten only by Dubai. Nevertheless, transactions at this level of the market are often slow, with properties spending an average of 319 days on the market in 2024, according to research by Concierge Auctions.
The US auction house is partly owned by Sotheby’s and is the biggest player in auctions of high-end real estate; it accepts only the “top 5 per cent” of properties submitted for consideration and claims an 85 per cent share of the global market. Since it was founded in 2008, sales have totalled more than $4bn, across 46 US states and 35 countries.
Last year, Concierge Auctions sold several properties worth more than $20mn, while UK property consultancy Allsopp sold a record £610mn of residential property at auction, though much of this was at the lower end of the market. “Property auctions are a growing category for homes priced above $5mn,” says Chad Roffers, chief executive and co-founder of Concierge Auctions.
Speed is the key attraction for sellers opting for online property auctions, says Charlie Smith, managing partner of Venteu, which mostly sells homes costing over €1mn in European holiday destinations; for each property, the company typically aims to generate 500 inquiries, 15 or more viewings and three to seven registered bidders.
“Owners often say to us that time is as valuable to them as any other commodity,” Smith says. Clients are generally older, he adds, and are selling a property that their family has outgrown, often by the beach or in a ski resort. Buyers, meanwhile, tend to be younger, typically in their thirties or forties, attracted by the chance to see what others are prepared to pay — which can be far less than an estate agent valuation. Last year, Concierge Auctions sold an oceanfront estate in the Hamptons known as La Dune for $89mn. It was the area’s most expensive sale of 2024 — but still tens of millions less than the original $150mn asking price.
While sites such as Drouot.immo structure auctions around a viewing window, registration period and finally the sale, in Smith’s experience, around half of auction buyers don’t view the properties in person. “They could be sitting at their desk in Washington DC, and have done all the virtual tours and had their lawyers do the due diligence, including everything from the cadastral plans to planning information and pest reports,” he explains. It’s not unlike buying a vintage car at auction, he adds.
Langer agrees that the increased interest in property auctions is being led by a new, younger generation of affluent buyers who have grown up with online sales and auction platforms. “For them, auctions feel familiar, exciting and efficient, whereas the traditional slow, opaque [property] sales process can often feel archaic,” he says. “The gamification of luxury is not just accepted — for the next generation, it’s expected.”
Americans are a key buyer demographic for Venteu — Smith says they accounted for about half of the interest in two properties recently auctioned near the city of Matera, in southern Italy (one of which sold for €1.95mn, €825,000 over its top estimate). Time will tell whether a weaker dollar starts to put them off European real estate. Most other buyers are from northern and eastern Europe; Swedish buyers are also a significant presence — about 5 per cent of the client base.
As for the Paris apartment, Drouot.immo says that by mid-June it had received interest from 70 people across the globe: as well as French, Belgians and Swiss, there were those from Britain, the US, Lebanon, Brazil, Mexico and Dubai. And one from Monaco.
Property auctions are not without controversy — lawsuits in the US have wrangled with claims that fake bidders have been used to drive up prices. And a successful sale is not guaranteed. Two London properties auctioned at Sotheby’s in May — previously on the market at £8mn and £3mn — received opening bids deemed too low by the sellers, who decided to withdraw from the auction.
Langer says that while auctions are a growing market (at least in terms of new players), the sector is likely to remain niche. “For some, it’s not just about the transaction, but much more about the drama of the moment,” he adds.
“It’s a process you can watch in real time,” agrees de Lummen. “The bidders are anonymous so you don’t know who you’re bidding against — even we don’t know which of the registered buyers has won until the end. Auctions have everything: excitement, tension, passion and envy. They’re a spectacle.”
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