A South Wales three bed end terrace house listed for sale at auction with a guide price of £0(nil) stunned bidders and sellers alike when it sold for more than £100,000.

A dozen prospective owners waded into the fray in a bid to secure the dilapidated property in Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan.

Eventually, after a staggering 230 bids were laid, the empty house with an overgrown ‘jungle’ as a back garden, which was the opening lot in the catalogue of some eighty other properties, sold for a mind-boggling £104,850.

Sean Roper of South Wales-based Paul Fosh Auctions said: “Although the terraced house is in a sought after residential area it does need an awful lot of work doing to it to bring it up to modern standards so we and the owner were quite surprised and not a little delighted, when it achieved such a great figure at auction as the first lot in the online sales list.

“We weren’t able to look inside property in Brook Street, Bridgend, before the auction but it’s clear that the dozen bidders knew what it was and made clear their intentions by placing their 230 bids.”

Sean said: “The sale and the amount the property achieved at auction, which is fair to say exceeded all our expectations, will, I know, make a real difference to the life of the seller of the house.

“The property had been vacant for a number of years and will require full modernisation and improvement but is an ideal property for a builder or investor. It offers generous accommodation over two floors with three bedrooms and two reception rooms. There is a rear garden.

“It’s near to local amenities and shops and has good road links to the M4 and the McArthur Glen shopping outlet.”