Im moving upto Scotand in 5 weeks with work and the wife and I have said if we like it enough up there we will seriould look into buying up there.

Just having a quick look on right move and most of the houses in our budget say offers in excess of £….. how does this work then ??

how do you know how much over they want etc??

you offer as much as you feel the house is worth, same as anywhere. A few years ago I bought an “offers over” by offering £50 over the asking. In some areas, houses are going for under the asking price. Do some research, myhouseprice.com might help

You can pretty much ignore “offers over” in the current climate. It’s a handy thing to have on the assumption that you may get 3 or 4 interested parties and then they submit closed bids – usually somewhere in excess of the OO price. In truth, most properties are currently going on at, or just under, the valuation in the Home Report.

There’s nothing to stop you making an offer below the OO price and if a seller is keen then they might accept that in order to move on.

PS – check out the various Solicitors Property Centre sites too. (ESPC for Edinburgh etc) as you’ll see a lot more properties advertised there than on Rightmove, Zoopla etc

The amount over varies a huge amount depending on the area…. If its Aberdeen anywhere from 1-30%!

Welcome to the mystery of buying in scotland.

The good bit is that accepted offers are pretty much legally binding, therefore deals usually go throu and you don’t get gazumping or people trying to shaft you at the last minute.

Offers over is a blind auction, often without a close date, in the olden days this meant that you offered anything up to 30% and hoped for the best. Nowadays things are a bit more sensible. Personally I wouldn’t offer over the home valuation report unless I really wanted that house and only that house.

A much fairer way is fixed price but you don’t often see this now. The price is the price is the price.

Finally, solicitors handle most aspects of the deal, not estate agents.

It used to be a rule of thumb of about 25% over the “offers over” price but now you’ll either see fixed price, offers over or “offers around” – they all mean the same thing make us your best offer somewhere around this price.

What sort of area will you be looking in?

I’ve just bought a house 23% under the offers over price.. it was a builder selling it as they’d taken it in part ex.

As has been said above, offer what you think it’s worth and don’t be shy of being cheeky. Worst case scenario you have to offer a little more.

Exuse my ignorance but how do you get to see the home report?? is that given out by the estate agent??

Looking at possible around the inverness area !

Selling solicitors will provide it, sometimes on website but always on request. Home valuation report is the only important bit, but most mortgage lenders will still insist on their own survey anyway.

HSPC.

All you need on here.

Some estate agents provide a link on their site or in the particulars. Many want you to have to ask for it – as a way of capturing your details.

Good luck. I’m in the midst of moving to Aviemore. Maybe we can catch up when you get moved.

scotroutes….. this is all pipedream at the moment as we havent moved up with my job yet!

Where abouts in Aviemore though and what are prices like around that area?

You can pretty much ignore “offers over” in the current climate

Not in the micro bubble that is aberdeen and surrounding areas

True enuff!

We will be just on the outskirts. Thought long and hard about being somewhere more remote but we’re both so “practical” that it just didn’t make sense. The Mrs has been offered a job up there already – I’m just going to try to pick up some part-time work. Prices are a bit higher in Aviemore that its surroundings. Some of the smaller villages look good (e.g. Carrbridge) but its rare for houses to come onto the market.

We also looked at Inverness itself (we have friends there) but felt it was swapping one (albeit quite a lot larger) city for another.

We will be at St Andrews for a year and then moving up to Lossiemouth at somepoint next year so will start looking around then !

Good luck. I’m in the midst of moving to Aviemore

Lucky man!

Where abouts in Aviemore though and what are prices like around that area?

Mate, go and look on Google Streetview – there’s no real ‘whereabouts’ in Aviemore, it’s got a population all of 2500…

Don’t buy a house in Renton. It’s a shitehole….

maybe scotroutes could re-open santa claus land?

SCL is about to have a Tesco built on it!!

dirty buggers. Was that not where the macdonald hotel is/was? it needs a bigger supermarket though. shame its tesco…

I loved Santa claus land, and the go karting . Ok so it was a concrete jungle bit when I was a kid it was heaven. My sister had an awesome crash on the dry ski slope when she barrelled down off the end, hit the rubber mat and her skis stopped ejecting her over the fence. Brilliant.

St andrews ? Rent paid ? If not prepare for a shock. Masssively overpopulated with rich students paying way oto fron rentals

Think most has been said above but we just sold in Musselburgh, in 3 weeks for over the asking price…

As mentioned, houses described:
Fixed price which is exactly what it says on the tin. Many were advertised this way, ie Fixed Price £275000 or a bit more via a solicitor conversation if you really want to close people out and are prepared to pay..
Offers Around, Like a fixed price but with a bit of wriggle room. More being advertised this way. The solicitor will give a guide value based on their view of the market, so the buyer sets a price close to this, and its OA. ie, Offers Around £275000 (may go for a little more or a little less)
Offers Over… as mentioned above, a starting price then your guess of +10 – 30%. Put your bid in and off you go. The highest bid may not get it, entry date etc may swing it for the seller… may be a bold one in the current market ie, Offers over £275000 could mean £350000 upwards to whatever someone is prepared to pay. Visiting and viewing an OO property I would always ask the seller what the solicitor has advised as a value, or what the seller is hoping for… most folk have a figure in mind…

Declaring a Note Of Interest in a property means that anything that happens to the potential sale must be communicated to you but you are not obliged to bid.

A good solicitor can negotiate on your behalf with the sellers solicitor so its not a completely sealed bid and done deal…

Upside, no gazumping, or sellers bumping the price up close to the signing date or “Missives”

Downside, as a buyer you may get frustrated putting in offers and not getting them accepted and not really knowing if your offer was in the ball park or not.

Our solicitor was pretty canny, we had 4 notes of interest and she said to keep the process moving so we set an early closing date (ie, put your bids in), to keep things going, stop potential buyers wandering off or seeing something else and it worked. With only 4 its a bit of a gamble against waiting for more but this is what we did.

I prepped loads of questions and we really tried to engage sellers, with the right approach its amazing how helpful sellers can be…

HTH

Its worth pointing out that although most still go with offers over. the price advertised is usually set below the valuation to entice folk.
Get the home report and use the valuation to decide how much you wish to offer.

Watching this wih interest after a day of monster earthquakes

It’s a convention but not a legal obligation.

Declaring a note of interest is a.waste of time in my experience and I’ll also add that fixed price isn’t all that fixed any more, nothing to stop you making an offer.

I wouldn’t say that. It gives the potential buyer a way of putting a decision on hold while they look around for a better house, finance etc knowing that they’ll (usually) get a chance to bid in the event of any other offers being made. As a seller it’s useful as a way of seeing just how much genuine interest there is, of confirming that the asking price is in the right ballpark and of hopefully getting a bit of a blind auction going.

What I mean is that I’ve only ever put in 2 notes of interest, and both times the houses were sold without a closing date being set or me being informed. The last 2 we’ve bought we haven’t hung around, made a fair offer after enough time to reflect and be sure and had it accepted the same day.

similar experiance to unknown

stuck in notes of interest and then been informed its sold or its gone to closing and we were outbid by 80k.

Once i saw a house that fittedv our criteria rather than just “it’ll do” i went directly in with an offer at asking – they countered – wanting a tiny little bit more to take it off the market there and then having only stuck it on the market the day before , i agreed deal done , and id try it again every time if it was the right house as oppose to getting something “on the cheap” but not fitting my criteria fully.

Declaring a note of interest is a.waste of time in my experience and I’ll also add that fixed price isn’t all that fixed any more, nothing to stop you making an offer.

We sold last year. Started out offers over, offers around and then went to Fixed Price and ended up accepting an offer that was lower than the Fixed Price, but was acceptable to us.

Would have loved to have been in the same position with my first flat, where I had 6 offers and went to a closing date. For the right house in the right area, this still applies but it is definitely a buyers market out there. Which worked out for us when we bought our new place. 🙂