Oksjonikeskus

Oksjonikeskus.ee is the electronic auction environment of the Estonian Chamber of Bailiffs and Trustees in Bankruptcy (Kohtutaiturite ja Pankrotihaldurite Koda), a module of the enforcement and bankruptcy proceedings information system taken into use under section 115(2) of the Bailiffs Act and administered by the Chamber. It is not a commercial marketplace: every lot is entered by a named court officer - a bailiff, a bankruptcy trustee, a liquidator, a reorganisation trustee or an administrator of an estate - disposing of assets seized in enforcement proceedings or realised from an insolvent or inherited estate, and that official is responsible for the sale. Around a hundred lots are in live bidding at any moment, with several hundred more open for registration and some three thousand more sitting at the revaluation stage.

What you can buy

• Real estate: repossessed apartments (a one-room Tallinn flat listed at 89,370 EUR), houses, development plots and farmland across Estonian counties, from 850 EUR flats in Kohtla-Jarve to seven-figure estates.
• Vehicles: mostly ordinary used cars, usually starting between 200 and 1,500 EUR: Volkswagen Passat, Volvo V50, Ford Focus C-Max, Citroen C4, Toyota Auris, Mini Cooper. Vans, trucks, semi-trailers and the occasional motorcycle turn up alongside them.
• Watercraft: a small standing category, currently a Flipper motorboat with trailer and a Princess V58.
• Property rights: shares in private limited companies, fractional co-ownership shares, portions of undivided inherited estates and bankruptcy-estate claims against debtors.
• Other movable property: bankruptcy-estate business assets, from plasma cutting equipment and cheese-making lines to ventilation or electrical stock, a clothing shop's entire fixtures and inventory, office chairs, monitor arms and pedestal drawers, down to boxed perfume sold by the unit.

How the bidding works

Login runs through TARA, the Estonian state authentication service, using an Estonian ID-card, Mobile-ID, Smart-ID or an EU eID. Bidders from abroad who hold none of these ask the organiser for a username and password valid for that single auction. Registration is per lot and normally closes before bidding opens - an hour ahead on the Tallinn flat - though movables worth up to 1,000 EUR can be registered for right up to the bid. You pay any deposit, which the law caps at a tenth of the starting price; many low-value lots carry none. Bidding is timed, in whole euros, in fixed steps set by the organiser, with an optional automatic bid limit. Each late bid extends the close by the interval stated in the notice - most often five minutes, within a legal range of one to sixty - up to a ceiling of 120 hours. Anyone may bid, debtor and creditor included; representatives must file a power of attorney by the registration deadline.

What to check before you bid

Every notice states its own VAT treatment: some starting prices have VAT added, some already include it, some carry none at all. Payment is fast: the full sum by the working day after the auction closes, or, above 12,700 EUR, a tenth by that day and the balance within fifteen days, extendable by another fifteen on written request. Miss it and you forfeit the deposit, are barred from the repeat auction and owe any shortfall. Inspection is by arrangement with the organiser on the terms each notice sets - three working days' notice at one office, a single pre-registered viewing at another, occasionally no access because the owner will not allow it - and lots sell as found: one Passat listing warns the bailiff has no keys. Not everything here is an online auction; the environment also carries oral-auction and sale-by-other-means notices, where offers go to the bailiff's office as a digitally signed e-mail. Notices are Estonian-only, and collection happens wherever the individual organiser holds the asset.