Auctioning a commercial property that is not a foreclosure.

[Katrina Dividina]

I found a 50-room motel that is going for auction in May 2023 with crexi.com, starting bid is 150k. 2 acres.  I am very interested as I talked to our city council that this motel is ok to be converted into apartments since the housing in our town is scarce. 

So i did my due diligence. I talked to the sellers agent and he showed me the property. Most of them are newly renovated. 

So this is what the agent said about the property:

1.) It is in auction, but not foreclosure auction, this is just the way crexi does it.

before it get to auction, the posted price was 699k

2.) There is still mortgage lien on the property.

3.) There are 7 long term tenants on the property (not sure if they are paying rent/on time. 

Questions are

- can a property go into auction without being on any forclosure stage? 

- can I just buy the property not on auction? Thinking I should just talk to the sellers agent and give me a price and get a Commercial mortgage lender instead of trying to win on an auction and pay cashiers check?

Thank you for your response in advance.