buying a home at a trustee auction

Have any of you ever done this?

Backstory: (long)
Around the summer last year when home prices were real low here in the PHX metro area, my neighbor tells me he is buying a new house. He just had a second baby and I guess they wanted more space. I asked him what he thought he was going to do with his current house and he did not say a whole lot.
Pretty quickly I realized he was going to buy a new house and then let the first one get foreclosed on. He bought in 2005 when home prices were through the roof so I am sure he was underwater.

Anyway, yesterday I finally saw the notice that the house is going to be auctioned off in May. They were pretty cool, nice people (except for bailing out on their mortgage and all ) and kept the place up very well.
I am wondering if I could get a real steal and just wanted to know if anybody has had any experience with this sort of thing.
I know that paying for a title search is a definite must.
Anybody had any experience with this stuff?

Thanks