The article refers to purchasing the property at auction, the essential planning, and the steps required to complete a successful property acquisition. Although the general property market faces testing times, auctions are where deals can and are being made.
Auction Property Purchase With No Money Down
These circumstances have led to lenders’ rapidly shifting criteria, with funding lines that were previously available either being withdrawn or altered beyond recognition. Therefore, how can I assist you in raising finance? I manage a regional finance business with access to a panel of over 100 lenders, from high-street banks and institutional investors to merchant and private banks, wealthy private individuals, groups, and venture capitalists.
Whether you’re a seasoned property investor or a novice, no disputing property auctions are where extraordinary bargains will be had for those with a keen eye for a deal. But how do you obtain finance in a market where LTV ratios are falling without employing substantial amounts of your money?
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So why use an auction? There are many reasons people consider buying or selling at auction; they may want to move quickly, be looking for a plot of land for development, the property may involve repossession, or want a quick purchase without the risk of gazumping. Also, many buy to let investors consider auctions because of the variety of properties on display at any one time, and by nature, there is a good place to bag a bargain.
With repossessed properties, the lender who has taken ownership of the property owes a burden of care, “an equity of redemption,” to the client to whom they initially lent monies. In practice, a lender who repossesses will generally offer these types of properties at an auction, and so they remain places where undervalued properties can be acquired.
Buying or selling properties at auction can have several advantages for both the buyer and seller. Most delays associated with property transactions are eliminated, the auction and completion dates are fixed, and the sale contract becomes binding upon the gavel’s fall.
The following tips section of this article will focus on the property transaction primarily from the buyer’s perspective, emphasizing the lenders that operate in this market.
Tips
Inspect the property and do as much research as possible about it and the neighborhood. House price sites can tell you how much similar properties have sold for.
Ensure you read all written material provided by the Auctioneer, the Legal Pack, and the HIP. Understanding the auction’s contents and terms and conditions is important.
Ensure sufficient funds are available for the deposit, which must be paid at the auction. The deposit is often 10% of the sale price, but you should check what it will be before the auction. Also, check which payment methods are acceptable (as some may not be good, such as cash or credit cards).
Most Property Auction Houses do not advertise to the public as they are still aimed at professional purchasers, so you will need to make inquiries on the Web or at your local estate agent to determine when and where a property auction might include properties of interest will take place.
Be prepared to move fast. Property Auctions occur only three to four weeks after the property auction catalog is first issued. If you are subsequently successful at auction, you usually have 14-28 days to complete. A ten-day default period will follow, during which the purchaser will be charged interest. In the worst-case scenarios, this can extend the 14-28-day period. Check the Auction guide in small print to see what penalties this will incur.
Property for sale
On the auction day, an intention to bid must be registered (either before the auction or in the auction room). If the bid is successful, the sales memorandum must be signed, and the deposit must be paid immediately.
The buyer is often responsible for the property’s insurance when the gavel falls. When the purchase price balance is paid and possession is taken, the sale conditions will state the completion date.
If a property being sold does not make its “reserve price,” then although this is generally not disclosed, the auctioneer will state that the current bids are close to the reserve price. After the auction, a subsequent conversation may allow you to purchase the property below the reserve price if the vendor agrees.
This final “tip” is worth considering in some detail: the level of due diligence a bidder should perform before the auction. Historically, if a buyer had 20-25% of the purchase price in their back pocket, they were relatively safe going into the auction, making a winning bid, and then worrying about arranging the rest of the monies at that point.
These days, with restricted funding lines, it is worth ensuring that funds are available beforehand. Unfortunately, without a full valuation report, it is difficult for an investment mortgage provider or a bridging lender to give the applicant a definitive decision on the level of funds they can make available or the rates of those funds.
An agreement in principle can be indicated, but this will always be subject to the legal, due diligence, and valuation report. Although the legal due diligence cannot be arranged before the applicants’ “winning bid,” one variable that can be eliminated is the valuation report. Therefore, preparation boils down to whether or not the applicant should cover the expense of a valuation report even before they have become a successful bidder.
This can become an expensive exercise if the applicant looks at several properties. Still, the ability of a valuation report to highlight potential lending problems and to get an independent valuation not solely based on the purchase price – makes, in our opinion, the purchase of a valuation report pre-auction invaluable.
There has been a change in the market with regards to the acceptability of taking existing valuation reports and having them retyped to the ultimate lender – for example, the largest company of surveyors in the country, Connells, no longer accepts instructions for retypes, an education now has to be to a specific lender only. Likewise, a lender will almost always want to instruct the valuation themselves. This may mean that even if a valuation report has been prepared before the auction, the lender may require a second valuation report with the client’s subsequent expense.
Public record ownership property
The need for a second report can be minimized using values generally acceptable on most panels, but no guarantees remain. However, the initial valuation report should enable an applicant to pin down the lender to an exact loan amount, bearing in mind that no subsequent issues arise during the legal conveyancing. Any following information comes in at the same value.
Funding lines
Two funding lines can be used to complete an auction property purchase: a mortgage (either residential or investment) or a bridging loan. Each has its specific advantages and disadvantages.
Mortgages
Generally, a property purchaser at auction will not use the property as their main residence so that this section will concentrate on investment or buy-to-let mortgages.
The main advantage when being used as a purchasing form of finance is that you can generally get a loan of up to 75% of the purchase price (so long as the rental coverage exists), and the interest rate will be very low. Unless you were planning on reselling the property, then a buy-to-let mortgage would be the ultimate form of loan to be secured on the property; so by going straight into a deal to let mortgage, you avoid two sets of finance costs, the first finance cost of the loan used to acquire and the second of the agreement to allow mortgage itself. The disadvantages of using the investment to finance are as follows.
Speed
Although a buy-to-let mortgage can theoretically be put into place within four weeks (the general time scale of an auction purchase being 28 days), due to the underwriting process generally taking longer in the current economic climate, there are no guarantees that the mortgage will be in place before the 28 days are up. You could, therefore, lose your deposit.
Mortgageability
A buy-to-let lender will need the property to be mortgageable. If the property is damaged in any way, without electricity, plumbing, or even a kitchen/bathroom, the lender cannot secure a mortgage against it.
Retention
Retention is a watered-down version of the previous disadvantage. Lenders increasingly retain a proportion of the mortgage until the borrower meets certain preconditions. If, for example, the property is mortgageable but deplorable, the lender may hold back, for instance, £20,000 until the borrower has brought the property up to an “acceptable” standard. This may make completion impossible, as the whole land may be needed to make up the full balance of funds.
LTV
A buy-to-let lender will lend on a purchase transaction as a percentage of the valuation or purchase price, whichever is lower.
Rental Yield
Even if a valuation is on target, allowing a buyer to let the provider lend the required percentage if the rental yield is lower than the minimum necessary for that loan will reduce the loan amount available. For example, if a £100,000 property has a £75,000 loan offered, if the rental yield is over £400 and the rent is £350, then the loan amount provided would drop to £65,000.
Bridging Loan
Due to these previous disadvantages of applying for a buy-to-let mortgage at acquisition, many property investors will seek to use bridging finance to complete the purchase and then use the deal to allow mortgages to refinance from the bridging loan. The key advantages to a bridging loan are that as an asset-based form of finance, it is quicker; there are fewer affordability hoops that an applicant has to go through to be judged applicable, and in many instances, the loan becomes “self-cert.” A bridging loan can also be loaned as a percentage of the property’s Open Market Value, so if you have bought the property under market value, you can potentially borrow a higher rate of the purchase price than with a buy-to-let mortgage. Be warned, however, that the days of 100% lending against the acquisition property are more difficult to arrange; the lender will want to see at least some client contribution, even with a strong valuation report.
Certain bridging loans allow you to use the equity in a secondary property to essentially top up the loan to 100% of the purchase price, with a first charge on the property being acquired and a first or second charge on the additional security.
Finally, a bridging lender will not be put off by a property’s condition like a buy-to-let lender. So long as the asset has an open market value, a bridging loan can generally be arranged as a percentage of that value despite its condition. Some funding lines even allow you to draw down further monies against an increase in the property valuation to help fund any development works or release capital when the property is refurbished – allowing the developer to use these released monies to move on to their next project.
As with buy-to-let mortgages, utilizing bridging finance may have disadvantages, the main ones being as follows.
Expense
You will pay a premium on the monies borrowed with rates of 1-2% per month for the bridging loan’s speed and relatively self-cert nature. There will be additional valuation fees, legal fees, set-up costs, and potential exit fees in addition to these rates. Unless the applicant is borrowing at a very low LTV, it is rare in the current climate for these fees to be “rolled up” into the loan so that the set-up costs will be deducted from the loan drawdown, and then the loan will need servicing while outstanding.
Exit strategy
A relatively recent addition to buying-to-let mortgage providers’ criteria is that they will require a property to be held for a minimum period of 6 months before allowing an applicant to use their loan to pay back the bridging loan (there are new mortgage products available that don’t require this six-month rule). The buy-to-let loan can be borrowed as a percentage of the Open Market Value, but the applicant will have had to pay six months of bridging finance rates by that point.
Retained Interest
As bridging lenders are aware of this refinance precondition, many lenders, to guarantee that they will have their loan covered for the six months, will stipulate that six months’ interest is retained at the source. That means on a gross loan that initially looked quite good at 65% of LTV, the net loan that ultimately ends up in the borrower’s hands can be as low as 55% LTV even though, of course, this now results in the borrower not having to service the loan over its term. There are advantages and disadvantages to whichever form of finance is used to acquire a property at auction, and these relative merits change as the lending criteria themselves vary.
Certain aspects of the depressed property market currently being experienced make auction purchases more attractive than they were. However, these same conditions affect the availability of the remaining funding lines. Always perform minimal homework even before approaching a broker/lender with some knowledge of the security and what you hope to do with it; the broker/lender can fill in the gaps in your understanding of what products are still available and what criteria may have changed in your favor.
There is nothing that an underwriter likes better (save apart from a concrete exit strategy) than seeing a current valuation report on the property that they are being asked to give an agreement in principle on for a lending decision. The valuation report is supplied by a surveyor on their panel, so much the better.
For the sake of losing a reasonable sum of money, this valuation report may cost the information it provides may save you thousands in the long run.
In nearly every circumstance, I have found ways to assist and am happy to speak with you about financing your next or even your first auction property purchase. My colleagues can help you structure your portfolio tax-efficiently, minimizing capital gains and other taxations. Thank you for reading this property guide. I hope the information contained within will prove to be profitable for you. I urge you to take action and get started on creating your property portfolio plan and consider your next or first auction purchase.