Scottish System

As i understand it, the Scottish system is that once an offer is given and accepted in writing then that's it, you're legally committed.

When we bought our current house in Scotland, search results were available to us before we made an offer.

Yes, like when you buy a house at auction.

With the Scottish system, you express an interest in the house you want, and get your solicitor to do the appropriate search and a surveyor to have a good look at the property, and put in a sealed bit if you approve the findings. They seem able to manage this within a few days. There is usually a cut-off date given for bids, and the owners or their legal representatives contact the lucky winner at once (and the unlucky ones, unless they have no manners) They do not have to accept the highest offer.

Then you arrange the details of exchanging missives and getting the key, but the contract is from the acceptance of the offer. If something really terrible turned up, you would probably be justified in cancelling the whole thing for misrepresentation, but you don't start haggling on price. You are expected to have your financial arrangem,ents in place before putting in the offer

The downside is that you may still have to sell your existing house.

I found it incredibly easy to sell a house in Scotland but thankfully I have not had the trauma of buying because if your sealed bid is not accepted, you will have to start all over again financially and I do not think that has changed.

I have heard of potential house buyers in Scotland running up bills of £000s for legal and survey fees on a succession of properties and then failing to purchase any of them because they have been consistently outbid. Assessing what to offer for a property, particularly on a rising market, can be very difficult.

We once went to sealed bids on a property in England and came second. The successful bid was 50% higher than the 'Guide' price.

The fact of the matter is that in any system house buying is traumatic and difficult, which I think is inevitable given how much money is involved.

Petra, we're in the same position as you. I'm not worried about our buyers, they are very keen. I am worried about the people we're buying from though, for various reasons. I can't wait til contraacts have been exchanged. Until then, I won't really truly believe that it's going to happen! Fingers crossed that both of our moves will go through without a hitch.

Or even "contracts"! Must learn to check before I click on "Post message" haha!

Buying in Scotland was the Easiest house purchase we ever made. When you express an interest and make an offer it costs around £50. But it dose mean that if anyone else expresses an interest you are told about it.
Once our offer was accepted, we became the only people to have surveys etc. known as the Missives. Once the buyer is happy with the outcome of Missives, the next stage is the no going back stage. Thus everyone knows exactly where they stand and can be sure that they process is going ahead.
Also, we signed a document that allowed our Solicitor to act as our representative at every stage, so they did the 'worrying'! We just signed the final contract and that was that! Saved so much time, worrying and deters time wasters. All took about 8 weeks.
Prior to this we once sold a house in London and had 4 separate buyers, all who lied about their ability to buy. That process cost us £0000 is our solicitors fees, one ' purchaser' took us to exchange, but could not complete. We thus lost houses we were trying to buy! Give me the Scottish system every time! X

My DH and I used to buy old properties, do them up and sale them on as a business. Whenever we have sold a house we have always insisted the buyers pay a deposit before contracts are exchanged or the property stays on the market until they do exchange. The deposit held by our solicitor. If they then change their minds for anything other than a problem with the property they lose that deposit. When buying a property we always offered a deposit on the same terms until exchange of contracts. The initial deposit is then used as part of the deposit when exchange takes place. As a result we have never had any pull out of a sale.

I wonder why it is that buying and selling houses brings out the worst in otherwise reasonable people? We thought we had a straightforward deal about 20 years ago when we were selling a very old, listed farmhouse to people we knew wanted a character property. (It had character, also damp, spiders, dust, and wonky floors - not a right angle in the place) They knew what they were letting themselves in for but at the very last moment asked prissily if they could renegotiate the price in the light of the surveyor's report. We listened politely and then said cut the cackle basically how much? The reduction they wanted was very small so we said "Fine" as 1) we were desperate to sell the house - it was a black hole where money was concerned and the wood fire and rough stone walls played hell with DH's asthma and 2) we were so far down the line it would have cost more to do what we really wanted to do which was tell them where they could put their renegotiated offer. We bit the bullet, but to this day I know they were trying it on.

Sunseeker,that's how it's done in the US.

Is it not necessary to put down a holding deposit these days ? I know we did this with our first house in 1975.
We bought our second house under a sealed bid system in England. It was being sold by the local constabulary. We beat 6 other offers. Several years later I met one of the other bidders quite by chance. We had beaten her by a mear £500 this was in 1983.

Actually, I'm glad to live in England ; you know where you are with house prices, you find somewhere you like [when your own house is on the market and you have accepted an offer on it, no point doing anything before that point] make an offer on the price asked for the house, make another until house owners accept it. We have always asked them to take property OFF the market at that point, and usually [always in our case and we have bought about 15 houses] things go smoothly. We keep on our solicitors 'case' mind you as they can be a bit slow and go off to do other things, so never just leave them to it.I would hate the sealed bids thing.We have always kept in contact with the people we are buying from [before contracts are exchanged etc] as the personal touch works wonders.We have always been prepared to rent a house as well, rather than lose a sale if things do go wrong. if you rent for a while, you are then in a great position for buying the next house, having no house to sell.