The £425,000 garden flat that could be bought for just £75

THIS is the garden flat you could buy for as little as £75 in a radical new form of online auction launched today.

The seller of the two-bedroom property in Stanhope Road, Highgate, will still pocket the asking price of £425,000.

Sam Grief, 39, opted for the unusual method after struggling to sell the flat for more than a year, despite knocking £125,000 off the price.

Bidders will be asked to pay £75 for a place at the virtual auction. It will only begin once enough people have signed up to cover the property's value plus stamp duty, commission for the auction website and a charitable donation.

The home will be won by the person who offers the lowest price not the highest. Bids can range between £0 and £22,400. But the catch is this: the winner must chose a figure that has not been selected by any other bidder.

The value of a property determines the number of people who must sign up to the auction to make it valid and the range of bids they can make.

In Ms Grief's case, the auction begins once 7,900 people have entered. At that point, a time will be set for them to make a maximum 200 attempts at the lowest unique bid.

Her property is the first in London to be auctioned by Humraz.com, set up by IT consultant Asmat Monaghan, 48. Mrs Monaghan, from Walton-on-Thames, said: "Everybody wins. The seller gets their asking price without the anxiety of waiting for an offer or estate agent costs, and also receives a donation to their favourite charity.

"The buyer gets a property at a fraction of its market value."

The element of skill said to be involved has ensured the Gambling Commission deems the auction a competition, not a lottery, which would require a special licence.

Ms Grief plans to donate £10,625 from the auction to the charity she works for, Business Action on Homelessness.

She told how days before she was due to complete on a conventional sale last month the deal became a victim of the economic downturn. The chain she was in collapsed after one of its members, a banker, lost his job.

She said: "It was devastating. My boyfriend and I had already moved to Bath. We committed to renting and we're completely stretched financially. It's incredibly stressful. Nothing's selling, although last summer properties like this were snapped up in weeks. We're desperate."

Humraz is now collecting pre-bookings for two house auctions in Essex and Northern Ireland.

Chris Brown, president of the national association of estate agents, said of the scheme: "I'm sceptical. It looks like a gimmick and a very convoluted way of selling a house. But if it works and is legal, that's fine."