New Town Relocations

House in HIlls

This is a basic guide to purchasing property in Scotland.

In Scotland properties are generally marketed at offers over or fixed price.
Offers over means that the vendor is expecting an offer in excess of the asking price
Fixed price usually means that the first formal offer acceptable to the vendor will be successful.
Once a purchaser has viewed a property that is of interest to them, they can note interest to the vendor through their solicitor. Once interest has been noted it is unusual for the property to be sold to a third party without notification to the interested parties. The only guaranteed method of ensuring that a property is not sold to a third party is to not only note interest but to have the property surveyed.
If there are no or a small number of notes of interest, you can try and negotiate a purchase as it is still possible with other interests to do a deal without bidding. However the more interest the more difficult this will become.
With the offers over system, a vendor is normally looking to try to fix a closing date for sealed bids. Each interested party would be invited to submit on a given day at a given time their best offer with all offers received being considered by the vendor.
Surveys for properties are usually carried out prior to submitting an offer, however in the Edinburgh and surrounding area it is becoming more common for offers to be submitted subject to survey with the survey being carried out if a price and date of entry can be agreed.
Once your offer has been accepted verbally there will be a period of correspondence between the selling solicitor and your solicitor known in Scotland as "the missives". This is the contract terms that the solicitors are seeking to have agreed with the instructions of their clients, once these contract terms have been agreed there is then in place a binding contract for the purchaser to pay the price on a date in the future. In exchange the vendor shall give up vacant possession and hand over the keys. This binding contract is offered subject to your solicitor being satisfied to the terms of the title deeds which will be examined by him during the course of the transaction.