What is a Closing Date in Scotland?

A Closing Date is a day and time, set by the seller’s estate agent, by which time the seller’s agent must have received an offer from anyone who wishes to submit an offer on that property.ย  Most often, buyers’ solicitors will fax the offer prior to the time of the closing date, on the day of the closing date.

Sellers’ estate agents or solicitor/estate agents will advise their clients to set a Closing Date when multiple potential buyers are interested in buying their property. The seller’s estate agent will know that there are multiple parties interested in purchasing the property because they have received multiple offers or multiple Notes of Interest.

The seller isn’t obliged to accept any of the offers that they receive at a Closing Date and isn’t obliged to accept the highest or ‘best’ offer on the table either.ย  They can still choose which offer they like the best.

For solicitor/estate agents, Closing Dates are regulated by Law Society of Scotland guidelines. These restate the fact that, at a closing date, the seller is not obliged to accept any offer or indeed to accept the highest offer.ย  However, they say that if the seller’s solicitor/estate agent enters into negotiations with any parties ‘with a view to concluding a bargain’ with that potential buyer, they cannot then enter into negotiations with another potential buyer until all negotiations are at an end on the original offer.ย  If the seller insists on entering into negotiations with another potential buyer, the solicitor/estate agent has to withdraw from acting for the seller.

Just as with Notes of Interest, non-solicitor estate agents are obviously not bound by these Law Society of Scotland guidelines.

What Are the Benefits of a Closing Date Over Negotiating Multiple Offers?

The benefit of a Closing Date is that it allows the seller’s estate agent or solicitor/estate agent to get all of the potential buyers’ best offers on the table.ย  This can be preferable to going backwards and forwards between multiple buyers, asking the buyers to submit their best offers but never being quite sure whether these offers are actually their final offer.ย  Negotiating multiple offers out with a Closing Date environment can also be very difficult, particularly for solicitor/estate agents, again because of the Law Society’s guidelines on gazumping and handling closing dates.

A seller’s solicitor/estate agent cannot tell one potential buyer what the another has offered.ย  However, the potential buyer tends to want to know this so that they can decide whether they can match or indeed beat the other offer that was received.

In addition, the seller’s solicitor/estate agent has to outright reject the original offer before they can start negotiating any further offers, even though there only might be a vague possibility that the further offer is better than the original offer.ย  This leads to the potential of losing the original offer.

It also can cause all sorts of communication problems as the seller’s agent has to rely on the buyer’s representative to accurately communicate all of this to the potential buyer . This is done to avoid complaints from the potential buyer about entering into negotiations on their offer and then entering into negotiations on a further offer, contrary to Law Society guidelines. Even whilst I’m writing this I’m conscious of how confusing and counter-intuitive this all is when set against the basic principle that somebody can sell a property to whomsoever they like and that it’s a solicitor’s professional obligation to do the best they can for their client.ย  So you can imagine the confusion that arises between, often non-legally qualified representatives and their clients over these issues.

The other benefit to property sellers is that an element of competition can creep in at a Closing Date.ย  Potential property buyers generally are quite emotionally invested in a property by the time that they make an offer.ย  The fear of losing out on something is almost as much of a driver for people as the enjoyment of getting something that they want.ย  For some people, it’s an even more powerful driver.ย  If multiple people are bidding, therefore, potential buyers will tend to add a little bit extra to the offer than if they were the only person offering.

Setting a closing date is simpler and cleaner than negotiating multiple offers at the same time.ย  Everyone submits their best offer and the offer is either accepted or rejected.ย  Unless the offer is ‘Subject to Survey’

Are you thinking of selling your property? Start your selling journey here with a free home valuation by one of our expert property consultants at MOV8 Real Estate. Call us on 0345 646 0208 or email [email protected] to talk to one of our property experts.

Comments

13 responses to “What is a Closing Date in Scotland?”

  1. susan klos avatar
    susan klos

    can you offer on a repossed house after the closing date?

    1. Robert Carroll avatar

      Thank you for your comment Susan. The rules relating to whether you can offer on a property are the same whether or not it’s repossessed. These rules will depend on whether the marketing agent is a solicitor or a non-solicitor estate agent. You can find a full explanation of what the process is at a blog post that we have written on this topic as it is a very, very common question! http://www.mov8realestate.com/2014/02/property-under-offer-in-scotland-can-you-make-an-offer-gazumping/

  2. Nick T avatar
    Nick T

    Everything said here seems pretty sensible, but there are some potential disadvantages to sellers with the offers over system as well. Sellers tend to think that they will get everyone’s best offer, and thus the highest price, if they set a closing date. But that requires the substantial assumption that buyers will wait around for a closing date. In the past month the following has happened with me: I put in a very good offer, just below valuation, on a property that had clearly had some trouble selling given its time on the market. The vendor declined and set a closing date for about a week later, figuring, I assume, that they would get our best offer and the best offer of two other interested parties. By the time that date rolled around however we had decided we had mixed feelings about the place and didn’t put in an offer, and the other offers received were weak. The place is still on the market. Had the buyers struck when the iron was hot and negotiated with us when we were still keen on the place, they would have gotten at least home report value and perhaps more. Also, without going into details, there were two other occasions were we were prepared to put in an very very good offer, but the closing date was weeks away and we weren’t prepared to faff around waiting for it. The general point here is that although buyers think they will get everyone’s best offer by set a closing date, they are wrong to think they hold all the cards. They might miss out on the best offers too.

  3. Nick T avatar
    Nick T

    p.s. One other thing I meant to add. Buyers also have the assumption that the sealed bid will represent the most a buyer is prepared to pay, but that is often false. When you bid on a property, you have to balance the desire to get the property with the desire not to pay more than you need to. For example, suppose a property has a home report value of ยฃ300,000, and is listed at offers over ยฃ275,000. Someone might be willing to pay ยฃ325,000 for it, but *not willing* to bid ยฃ325,000 in a sealed bids situation, since the idea of paying a lot more than the next lowest bid is galling. Maybe this is irrational but I think it does feature heavily in buyer psychology. On the other hand, if the seller had just said “look, I will sell this property for ยฃ325,000”, they might have been offered that price. Sealed bids often don’t represent the most someone will pay, they represent someone’s best guess at what they are prepared to pay *minus* what they think they don’t need to pay to beat other offers.

    1. Robert Carroll avatar

      Thank you for your comments Nick. You raise some very good points and it’s absolutely not possible to absolutely disagree with them. There is definitely the chance that a closing date could lead to people not actually submitting their best bid. In the same way as, if a property was in an auction that took place in 4 weeks time and you found something you liked meantime, you might buy that property meantime because of the relatively high chance that you wouldn’t secure the property at the auction, closing dates can have the same effect. For others, they just will not get involved in a closing date scenario, full stop. And I totally appreciate your point about how some people will react, psychologically, to the closing date and that they will reduce their bid to avoid the feeling of perhaps having overpaid. It really does depend on the property and also how serious a level of interest you believe the potential buyers actually have.

      However, with anything like this you have to base your actions, techniques and advice around what the majority of people do and how they think. The honest truth is that, as much as I personally really don’t like closing dates/sealed bids/auctions, they are a part of our property system and will remain so when the market is good and there is a lower supply than there is demand for certain types of properties in certain areas. I have a lot of experience of dealing with buyers, many of them very educated and otherwise sensible, who will somehow find an extra ‘few’ pounds down the back of the sofa the night before the big day and stretch themselves horribly because of the fear of missing out and not securing the property at the closing date. Our role, as advisers to the buyers, is to try to talk some sense into them when their emotions have got the better of them. There are exceptions, definitely, and it sounds like you really do think these things through on a very rational level, but most people get quite emotional about the idea of property and a home and sadly, in many cases, heart overrules head. Closing dates, and advice given to sellers in the appropriate circumstances, taps-into this and leverages it to the seller’s advantage. To most people reading this, this probably sounds unbelievably inhumane, but it’s no different to any other agent acting on behalf of their client and trying to get them the very best result from a given scenario.

      Thank you for your comments though. It’s absolutely true that there are exceptions to the rule and you have eloquently highlighted them!

  4. Elizabeth avatar
    Elizabeth

    hello

    I am selling and have 2 offers & a note of interest. Estate agent kinda talked me into a closing date [which is in a few days]. I did the viewings myself. DILEMMA: Of the two offers I have, I prefer the people who offered ยฃ1100 less than the other offer. They would just ‘fit’ the house / street and I really liked them Is it illegal or unethical for me to try and contact them & negotiate a higher offer? I know I do not need to accept the highest [or any] offer but I am not prepared to loose out on the extra ยฃ1100 & I obviously do not know if the note of interest will offer or offer higher. I prefer honesty and would rather be up front with people.

    many thanks

    1. Robert Carroll avatar

      Thank you for your comment Elizabeth. I’m assuming that you have a solicitor already, to deal with the conveyancing on the sale, so there’s a limit to what we can say here. It’s of course entirely your choice as to what offer you accept or whether you reject any offer or offers. The emotional pull of the people whom you want to own the property that you’ve often spent several years of your life in, versus the financial benefit of accepting the highest offer, is something we come across a lot. I would honestly recommend to any of our clients in that situation that they wait and see what happens at the closing date as your concerns may be a case of worrying about a day never comes: if your favourite buyer bids higher than the other, assuming all other conditions of the offer are acceptable to you, there’s nothing to worry about. In terms of going back to the potential buyer and effectively giving them a steer as to what the other offer is, to ensure they bid higher, I’m afraid that’s something you would need to take advice from your own solicitor and/or estate agent about though, if it helps here, it’s not something that we ourselves would do or recommend. Much of this really comes down to what you are comfortable with on a personal level: it’s not illegal for a member of the public to discuss these sorts of things with potential buyers – they are rules that apply to the estate agency or legal professions (depending on whom you are using to sell your property). I hope that helps a little!

  5. Joe simpsom avatar
    Joe simpsom

    Been told. My estate agent that they need at least two notes of interest before setting a closing date. I have one very interested party who think they are the only game in town and have put in a note of interest. My view is they are just waiting to see what happens with a view to making a low offer eventually when they see no one else coming forward. I would like to set a closing date and let flush out their offer. My estate agents says they are not allowed to do this on one offer. Is that correct?

    1. David Marshall avatar

      Hi Joe,

      Thanks for getting in touch. I completely understand your frustration on this, but unfortunately it is a difficult one for us to offer guidance on. If your estate agent is purely an estate agent (i.e. they are not a solicitor estate agent) then they would not be bound by Law Society Regulations.

      The best suggestion I could offer is to get in touch with your agent and ask them to give you some detail on exactly why they are unable to act as you would wish them to, as they will obviously be best placed to explain things. While it may not change the situation, it should at least clarify what the issue is.

      Sorry that I can’t be of more assistance on this one. Hopefully your agent can explain what is going on and I hope you get a positive result from our sale soon.

      David

  6. Joanne Callaghan avatar
    Joanne Callaghan

    I am currently looking to buy a house that I love and would suit my family perfectly. I am worried about allowing my heart rule my head as the house needs a lot of work and if I offer way over the home report value I would be leaving myself short in funds needed to carry out essential work. My question is, is there a standard percentage or value over home report values that can be followed? There are 2 other notes of interested submitted but no official bids, we have put an offer in today but I expect it will be rejected and go to closing date.

    1. Robert Carroll avatar

      That’s a good question and one that we are asked all the time by buyers. We wrote an article on this Blog back in 2013 that was aimed at exactly the question of how much you should bid at a Closing Date: https://www.mov8realestate.com/2013/01/how-much-should-i-pay-at-a-closing-date-and-how-can-i-avoid-closing-dates/. Looking at it now, the market has shifted so much that the advice in that article is already looking quite dated. The main thing was to avoid properties marketed at ‘Offers Over’, but that’s pretty much every property on the market right now, so that’s not going to help very much. There’s another article on the Blog about what Offers Over means and how much you should pay: https://www.mov8realestate.com/2015/10/offers-over-how-much-should-you-pay/. Again, even in the space of the past couple of years, the market has shifted a bit so that not all of that advice is relevant. There is no set percentage over Home Report valuation that you could apply across the board. The amount of competition is the main driver: if there are 20 Notes of Interest then it’s far more likely to sell for a price in excess of the Home Report than if you are the only interested party. It’s also more likely to sell for a higher percentage over the Home Report valuation than one with less interest. The Offers Over price is set arbitrarily: there is no formula that says it should be 10% below what the seller is expecting to achieve, so that’s not hugely instructive either. It’s undoubtedly a frustrating system for buyers, particularly when the market is buoyant, and there are sadly no hard-and-fast rules. The best advice that I can usually give a buyer is that they should pick a price that they feel comfortable offering and stick to it. One way of looking at it is to consider whether, if they had to sell the property in a couple of years time and the market was not as ‘hot’ as it is now, would they regret the amount that they had paid in the event that they were not able to sell for as much as they had paid for the property. I hope that’s at least a bit helpful.

  7. Jamie avatar
    Jamie

    Hello

    Iโ€™ve seen my dream house and keen to make an offer however my house isnโ€™t on the market yet. Iโ€™m worried that my offer wonโ€™t be very strong without an offer on my own house. My dilemma is that the one I want to offer on is going to a closing date, but if weโ€™re not successful I donโ€™t want to sell my own. Howโ€™s best to play this as if I put mine on the market now (so my offer is stronger) it may be sold and Iโ€™d end up with nowhere to go.

    1. Robert Carroll avatar

      Thank you for your comment Jamie. Your position is one that many buyers who also have a property to sell find themselves in. You are right to say that your selling position can be important, in a sellers market, in the seller’s decision as to which offer they favour. There are a number of options available to improve your position but none of them are without a level of potential inconvenience or a bit of a leap of faith. We actually produced a short video which can be found on our YouTube page which perhaps will help with some ideas here. Hope this helps! https://youtu.be/EkN1frDLqRg

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