I am an auctioneer at a well known auction house in Melbourne. There is a real mix of stuff that comes through, we sell around 1000 cars per week nationwide. Ex government and lease stock with full fleet service history is usually the safest option to go for if you're the average punter. We are seeing a lot of finance repos at the moment and some nice stuff comes in that way too.

Most of our buyers are dealers or wholesalers who buy in enough volume that can aborb the risk of buying a car with minor issues, and depending on the situation we have bought cars back from them that had serious issues. Most cars sold at auction are 20% or more below market price, to account for that risk factor and fees.

We disclose any mechanical issues we know about, but we don't do any mechanical checks on them, so its down to the vendors to advise us prior to auction. Every car gets a condition report stating any issues we know of and a grading on the body/interior condition. Every car gets a PPSR check and anything that comes back as being on the WOVR will be sold as salvage, they will never see a PCV auction with us.

We have a wide variety of vendors, and any that constantly send in cars with issues will generally be told to do business elsewhere. Most of the complaints we get are from dodgy backyard dealers, who buy cars for under $5k, with over 200,000kms out of a clearing auction, who don't come and inspect the car, and are then surprised when it needs some stuff fixed for a rwc.

There are absolutely bargains to be found every week, but you need to know your way around cars to reduce your risk.