diff --git a/storages/backends/s3boto3.py b/storages/backends/s3boto3.py
index 0124c65b8..cb4164dc6 100644
--- a/storages/backends/s3boto3.py
+++ b/storages/backends/s3boto3.py
@@ -347,6 +347,8 @@ def _get_or_create_bucket(self, name):
                                                "region than we are connecting to. Set "
                                                "the region to connect to by setting "
                                                "AWS_S3_REGION_NAME to the correct region." % name)
+
+                elif err.response['ResponseMetadata']['HTTPStatusCode'] == 404:
                     # Notes: When using the us-east-1 Standard endpoint, you can create
                     # buckets in other regions. The same is not true when hitting region specific
                     # endpoints. However, when you create the bucket not in the same region, the
@@ -364,11 +366,6 @@ def _get_or_create_bucket(self, name):
                         bucket_params['CreateBucketConfiguration'] = {
                             'LocationConstraint': region_name}
                     bucket.create(ACL=self.bucket_acl)
-                else:
-                    raise ImproperlyConfigured("Bucket %s does not exist. Buckets "
-                                               "can be automatically created by "
-                                               "setting AWS_AUTO_CREATE_BUCKET to "
-                                               "``True``." % name)
         return bucket
 
     def _clean_name(self, name):