Closing dates in Scotland - experiences??

glasgowdan

As a buyer, is there ANYTHING you can do to improve your chances of getting a property if it might go to a closing date? Any tips to try and get a nice quick deal before it going to closing? Obviously price being the biggest thing I suppose.

Has anyone bought a house recently at a closing date? Did it go much above the home report price?

Anything at all? We might be in the position of offering on a house that might go to one, and really want to maximise our chances.

New_Me

Ask what date of entry they want, some want 6 weeks some 3 months.

Price is the biggest thing, but if offers are close people either pick the highest or the offer from the people they liked best. They would be crazy to take an offer instead if closing if there are multiple interested parties.

davidmcn

No chance of agreeing an offer in advance of the closing date. If you are flexible with entry date and aren't conditional on your own sale or a mortgage or additional surveys, by all means point those out. But your solicitor will guide you in all of this.

glasgowdan

There's no closing date set yet, just that there might be. I suspect there's nothing we can do but I'm just wondering if there's any ideas that may help.

googler

Take your solicitor's advice, but I'd be inclined to make your best offer straight off, without waiting for a closing date to be set. Make it clear it's your best offer, and if declined, it will be withdrawn and won't be tendered at any subsequent closing date.

That way, the owners either accept or decline, and you move on to another house if they decline. If it's good enough, the owners won't feel the need to set a closing date.

It has to be your best offer, though. There's no point in tendering a half-hearted one which gets rejected, and THEN pitching another at closing.

caileag

Experience as a recent seller, whose property went to closing date -

1) as others have said, make your best offer up front. We had a couple of offers which were clearly just testing the water, if they had been half-decent we might have accepted but, having got these, we knew it was time for a closing date, at which point...
2) don't offer a "round figure". We ended up with our two best offers being exactly the same, to the penny (£xxx,000). If either had even offered £50 above, they would have secured it, but they didn't so...
3) make it clear you are ready to proceed and any flexibility you have. Do you have funds in place/mortgage agreed etc. Can you set a date to meet the sellers requirements? Are you wanting to offer for any furniture etc which the seller might have been wanting to sell?

For us, it very nearly came down to the toss of a coin, in the end, we made a judgement over which buyer was least likely to cause any issues.

Sellers just want a good price, and an easy sale. Make it clear at all stages that you are willing to offer that.

Good luck.

System

yup, agree with the above.
If there's no closing date set then just make your offer - that's how we got ours (for home report value)
the amounts will depend on the area you are in for example I am selling a place in edinburgh which we expect to get over the home report value, but bought a house over on the west coast for 25k less than home report value with a straight clean offer!