Buying property through auction

[phillvr6]

I've started keeping my eye on the property market with a view to upsizing. Whilst looking around I've found a house which is being advertised on the usual sales sites for £160k.

Now with a bit more digging its become apparent that it went up for auction at the end of September with a reserve of £160k and didn't sell as the top bid was £120k.

So heres the question, is it possible to buy houses through auction using a normal mortgage in the same way you'd buy any other property?

The house in question appears to be a bit delapidated but for the time being I'm assuming its purely cosmetic.

All advice apreciated.

Thanks,

Phill

[Pupp]

Problem you've got is you're contractually bound from the drop of the hammer... mortgage lenders will want all sorts of searches and enquiries seeing through and any glitches could well make you either complete late or, worse, miss the boat totally. Expensive either way. There will be specialist lenders out there who will be more flexible (at a corresponding cost) but forget your high street domestic lenders.

Better bet might be to raise a float against something you already own and use that as 'cash'. Once the property is secured (and assuming it comes up to spec as your essential homework will indicate), then mortgage it to pay off the float.

[spikeyhead]

You now know that it didn't sell at auction for £120,k, so offer the £130k.

Its not as if there's a shortage of available stock at the moment.

[Graham]

we bought our first house at auction, but had a valuation and mort offer done first.. would have been a bit of a bugger if we hadnt got it..

I was shaking like a leaf when we did it. 32K seemed a lot of cash back then <LOL>

you need to put 10% down when the hammer drops and have 30 days to complete or loose the deposit

G