In This Guide
choosing an agent
Conveyancing
Holding viewings
Negotiation
Planning your sale
Prepare your home
Seller's Packs
Selling at auction
Selling in Scotland
1. Overview and main differences
2. Preliminary activities
3. Receiving offers
4. Missives and settlement
Selling privately
Selling your home
Using estate agents
Selling in Scotland
Preliminary activities
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The first serious activity that you have to undertake when selling a home in Scotland is to get yourself a solicitor. Solicitors in Scotland are much more involved in the homebuying and selling process than their English counterparts. In fact, through Scottish solicitor centres, they take on much of the work that is normally done by estate agents in England and Wales, in terms of marketing the properties and having databases of homes for sale. You can find a large number of these centres in our SiteFinder directory.
By the time your prospective buyers come to view your house, they will have already provisionally applied for a mortgage and appointed a solicitor. This means that there is a minimum amount of waiting around waiting for people to do things - a big improvement on the uncertainty that abounds in the English process.
Anybody who views your property who then decides that they would like to make an offer on it, first of all contacts your solicitor in order to 'note interest' in the property. Once this has been done, you must allow that person time to make a bid on the property before accepting an offer from another potential buyer. If more than one party notes interest in your home, then your solicitor will liase with you to set a closing date - a date by which all offers must be received.
The interested parties then go away and complete their mortgage applications, during the course of which their lender will have your home valued for their purposes. The prospective buyer will have to foot the bill of this valuation, regardless of whether they end up purchasing the property.
It is necessary for the buyer to have arranged his or her mortgage and valuation or survey before making an offer. This is because once the offer is accepted you are both contractually obliged to complete the sale - an obligation they should only take on if they are sure that the lender will provide them with a mortgage for that particular property.
Once the valuation has been satisfactorily completed, the lender will make the hopeful buyer a formal mortgage offer. Once this has been done, he or she is free to make a bid on the property.
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