Less than most buyers assume. A notice of sale in execution appears in the Government Gazette ahead of the sale, and the useful window between it appearing and the auction happening is often a matter of weeks, and sometimes less than that.
That window is the whole job. It is the time to read the conditions of sale at the sheriff office, to drive past the property and see what you are actually bidding on, to work out what the arrears might be, to arrange the deposit, and to line up a guarantee for the balance.
Every one of those takes days rather than hours, and two of them depend on other people answering a telephone. A bank does not move faster because your auction is on Thursday.
Which is why finding out about a lot in the week of the auction is not really finding out about it. It is being told, too late, that something happened near you.
The window is also not the same for every sale. It is set by the notice and the court order behind it, not by a fixed rule you can plan around, so the only reliable approach is to be watching before there is anything to watch.
Watching an area is free on RepoLens, and the weekly digest exists so that the window belongs to you rather than to the gazette.
What to do with the time once you have it is the subject of the buyer's guide, which covers the six things that most often catch a first-time bidder out.