Short answer: yes, banks lend on sheriff-sale properties. The catch is the order of events. In an ordinary purchase you get a bond approved and then make an offer. At a sale in execution you bid first, and the finance has to catch up afterwards — against a deadline set by the conditions of sale rather than by you.
That reversal is the single thing that catches first-time bidders out, and it is worth understanding before the auction rather than during it.
On the day you pay a deposit, usually 10% of the bid, plus the sheriff commission. That money is committed the moment the hammer falls. The conditions of sale then give you a limited window — commonly 21 days, though you must read the conditions for the sale you are attending, because they vary — to deliver a bank guarantee for the balance.
A bank will lend, but it lends against its own assessment of the property, and it will not be hurried by your deadline. It has no stake in your 21 days. That is why a pre-approval in principle, obtained before you bid, is worth far more than a fast application afterwards: it tells you what you can realistically bid, and it starts the clock with the bank already holding your paperwork.
Getting the property inspected is harder here than in an ordinary sale, and a bank that cannot assess a property easily is a bank that moves slowly. Ask the attorney handling the sale what access is possible before the auction. Their name, number and reference are on every RepoLens listing, and that is what the reference is for.
If the guarantee does not arrive in time, the sale can be cancelled and the property re-sold. The consequence is not simply that you lose the deposit: you may be liable for the shortfall between your bid and whatever the property eventually fetches. A bid at a sheriff sale is a commitment, not an offer.
The bond is also not the whole cost. Transfer duty is payable to SARS on a sliding scale — nothing below R1,100,000, climbing in bands to 13% above it. Conveyancing fees pay the attorney who transfers the property into your name, bond registration is a separate attorney bill that scales with the loan rather than the price, and the Deeds Office charges its own fee to lodge the documents. Three of those four are payable whether or not your bond comes through.
You can work all four out from a listing price with the bond calculator, which fills the price in for you from any listing.
The bond window is one of six things that catch first-time buyers out at a sheriff sale. The others — which kind of sale you are actually at, what a reserve price does and does not mean, the arrear rates and levies that follow the property rather than the previous owner, and what evicting an occupant really costs — are covered in the buyer's guide.
Read that before you bid, not after.