To ask if anyone has experience of buying property at an auction ?

[Cloudyday10]

There's a flat I'm interested in and the auction is on Wednesday night
It's an extremely good price but there are no photos of the interior and I keep phoning the estate agent to ask for the home report but they say they don't have it yet The fact there are no photos of the inside and no home report yet make me very wary It's just such a good price
Does anyone have experience of buying property at an auction?

We did look into it before a long time ago. You basically have to be a cash buyer. Do you have the funds at the ready? Don't think there is enough time to raise a mortgage on the house you are bidding for. You will need some kind of bridging finance.

Happy to be prove wrong.

Read the conditions of the auction house.

I believe it is as-is-where-is i.e, sold with no warranties. You take the risk of all structural defects. Therefore, you must be able to reasonably judge how much work needs to be done - go down to the property with a builder and surveyor. Forget the photos - you need to inspect the property personally.

There will be an open day where you can do it.

Don't buy it unless you can see inside.

An estate agent once tried to get my to buy a 'great opportunity' without seeing it. The price was good. The inside was a shit hole when we finally saw it, as they found no one was crazy enough to take the risk and buy it without a viewing. It looked like it had been a crack then.

I would say that, before you go to the auction, you MUST

have your finances in place
have read and understood the auction terms and conditions
have read and understood the legal pack
have spent time in the property and the surrounding area.

If all looks ok, then you need to take ID with you to register to bid (usually passport and something else). You should have set yourself an upper limit, make it an odd number rather than a multiple of 5, people sometimes stop at a 5 or 0. Be aware of extras - auctioneer's fees, stamp duty thresholds, seller's expenses. You usually need to be responsible for insurance and expect to pay a 10% deposit on the fall of the hammer.

The auctioneer will have plenty of staff there who are very helpful, so just ask

Good luck