Putting in conditions for buyers at auction.

[DesolateWaist]

I'm off work sick right now and, as any sensible person would do, am watching Homes Under the Hammer.
One flat has just been on but sold under the condition that the person buying it hasn't bought anywhere in that borough of London in the last 12 months.

Is that a thing you can do when you sell a place? Can you say that you won't sell it to developers or to buy to let landlords?

I'd be surprised if you can do it at auction; contracts are exchanged when the hammer comes down, although I don't know what (if any?) vetting is done for bidders.

you could certainly do it with a 'standard' sale - just tell the agents who you don't want to buy it and they will (or should!) rule those people out.

It's not the first time I've heard of something like that on HUTH.

On HUTH it is usually when the property is being sold by the local authority - sometimes it is that it can only be bought by someone who is not going to use it as their primary residence, because it needs to stay as a rental property - it has something to do with what the council/HA are allowed to do with the proceeds of the sale. You also see it sometimes with properties with potential building plots, they have an 'uplift' clause where if you get planning or develop the site yourself and increase the value of it, you agree to pay some of it back to the original seller.

It will be mentioned in the legal pack prior to the property going to auction, so you should already know about it before you buy. Presumably, if you win it at auction but fall foul of the condition it will come out in the conveyancing afterwards, so you'd probably end up losing your deposit.

Thanks for that. So one of those bastard profiteering nasty landlords is the only one allowed to buy such a place? (Waits for mn to blow a fuse...)

I do love homes under the hammer. Wrecked properties turned into lovely homes, rather than building more tacky boxes on usable land. And that it gets out of London.