Private treaty sales are essentially negotiated sales between the seller and interested parties, with no expressed deadline but a desire for an optimum price realisation and executed sale without the help of an auction.

The most common example of a private treaty sale is a property agency sales process, where multiple interested parties are canvassed for their interest and price preference in order to strike a satisfactory balance between best price and effective closure of sale.

In the auction industry, private treaty sales are also used for assets as wide ranging as properties to niche luxury assets which require greater lead time of marketing and a wider sales window, most often to engage an international market of buyers.

In recent times, our John Pye Luxury Assets and John Pye Property departments have managed private treaty sales of premium propety as well as for a quartet of Formula One Grand Prix cars.

Private treaty sales offer both the vendor, buyer and agent longer time periods during which to qualify more technical niche asset details and their provenance, for which an auction may not be a sufficient time window to do so and thus may have an adverse effect on the asset’s realisation and true value.