FANCY a holiday home in Wales? You might like to consider 43 Castle Hill, an white-painted end-of-terrace cottage within reach of a leafy golf course on the outskirts of Denbigh. The average sales price on Castle Hill was £84,000 last year but No 43 can be yours for £50,000. It is just an example of the potential gems among the unsold lots available for pucrhase listed on the auction information site www.eigroup.co.uk (a cyber-place suitable for whiling away a wet summer weekend).

The gloom surrounding the prospects for the property market continues to intensify: among this week’s news is that sales are faltering, in the latest RICS report, and prices are falling in parts of Scotland, according to Lloyds TSB. But there remains out there an army of damp and deflated potential buyers still unable to find, or afford, the home they need.

Increasingly, auction catalogues are a source of comfort. Those willing to overlook, say, a short lease or the lack of a working kitchen (or, it should be noted, the uncomfortable feel of buying a repossessed home), might just find they can buy where they want, or secure that expensive extra bedroom. For sellers, a sale that can be finalised in weeks, rather than months, is an appealing prospect, especially amid fluctuating confidence about future price rises.

But buyer beware: it’s easier to succeed at auction than you might think, and not for the most heartening reasons. As we report on page 4, rival bidders are less and less likely to be professionals with a sharp eye on margins. Increasingly, they will be an equally desperate owner-occupier with a patchy awareness of where flood-risk areas are or what it costs to make a house by reversing a flats conversion.

No one is suffering as much as first-time buyers

Lenders are getting more picky, yet property prices are refusing to fall far enough, fast enough

Many will be lured by guide prices or reserves that prove to be well shy of the final selling price. Gorsefield, a detached home with clear views over the Wensum Valley near Norwich, sold at a Tops Auction House sale last month for £712,000 (despite an uplift clause ensuring that the NHS, the former owner, shares future profits in the case of development). The guide price, £275,000 to £325,000, might well have caught the eye of a growing family or two.

There is no shortage of information on how best to deport yourself as a buyer – you can find advice on auction-house websites or in our guide at www.timesonline.co.uk/property . But never underestimate the competitive fog that can descend when bidding starts. With those downbeat forecasts flooding in, buyers must, more than ever, ensure that they do not overpay – however hungry they are for an appealing cottage that sounds just perfect on paper.

PROFIT IN YOUR POCKET

Profits from higher property prices in regenerated areas are ending up in the pockets of ordinary homeowners, rather than big investors. This observation, from the Savills economist Yolande Barnes, came at the launch of the 2007 IPD Regeneration Index, which tracks the investment performance of property in such areas as Sheffield, Sunderland and Gloucester.

The index shows that residential properties in centres of regeneration have outperformed those elsewhere, over three, five and ten years. The profits, Barnes says, were made at high risk to the developers, who took a punt on sites and funded the work long before there was a hope of any returns. Local residents, however, have benefited equally from higher property prices without having to share the costs or the risk.

The sensation of having snatched a profit from under the nose of big businesses will no doubt cheer homeowners awed by the prices houses have reached in their area (and might have accounted for the grey faces of fund managers at the launch). But those now tempted to invest in a soon-to-be-regenerated area should be mindful that returns are much dependent on our position in the property market cycle. As Rebecca Graham, the IPD research analyst, put it: “Regeneration areas fare much better in the upswing, but are hit harder in downturns.”

CABLE BEFORE KIDS

From the Future Foundation comes my favourite statistic of the week: more first-time buyers think it is important to have a digital or satellite TV connection at home than it is to have children. In fact, it was found that such buyers – average age, 34 – placed more store on a night out, being on friendly terms with the neighbours or having an internet connection (almost anything, really) than being parents.

Much as I enjoyed these nuggets – contained in a report for GE Money Home Lending perhaps unsurprisingly called Life on Mars – the most important first-time-buyer factlet of the week is undoubtedly the one from the Council of Mortgage Lenders: that their number was down 11 per cent from this time last year to a three-year low of 35,600. Much as healthy buy-to-let lending, also reported by the council, is reassuring in a week of stockmarket jitters, a sustainable property market requires that we hope some more cable-over-kids first-timers appear.

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