Quite simply, this is the amount of money that the seller is asking any potential buyer to pay for their property. However, to complicate things, buyers put prefixes in front of the asking price. For example: "Offers Over", "Fixed Price", "Offers Around", or "Offers in the Region Of" and even "Offers Under".

In many cities in Scotland, marauding non-solicitor estate agency chains entered the Scottish estate agency market in the early 1970s and mounted a very serious challenge to the traditional dominance that solicitors had in the marketing and sale of property in Scotland.  For those of a younger generation, particularly in areas dominated by these national or international estate agency brands and chains, it's perhaps inconceivable that it was ever any other way.  However, in response to this, solicitors clubbed together and did one of the most commercial-thinking and customer-friendly things that the legal profession has ever done: they created 'Solicitors' Property Centres' (SPCs). In Edinburgh, for example, there is an Edinburgh Solicitors' Property Centre (ESPC) and in Aberdeen there is an Aberdeen Solicitors' Property Centre (ASPC). These two are probably the largest and most dominant SPCs and others exist in other areas throughout Scotland.

If you are interested in buying a particular property but are not yet ready or willing to offer, a Note of Interest is a first step towards ensuring (but not a guarantee) that you get an opportunity to make an offer on that property before it is sold to somebody else.  A buyer who wishes to Note Interest in a property should ask their solicitor to do this for them, giving that solicitor the address of the property, name of the estate agent marketing the property and ideally the agent's phone number.

So what is a Note of Interest? A 'Note of Interest' is a peculiarly Scottish thing and is effectively a courtesy between solicitors, although I've known non-solicitor estate agents to recognise the concept too, though not necessarily in the strict way that they are applied by solicitor/estate agents as a result of the Law Society's guidelines (see below). A 'note of interest' is a potential buyer's solicitor's way of telling the selling agent that their client would like an opportunity to make an offer on the property that's for sale.

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.  Most often, buyers' solicitors will fax the offer prior to the time of the closing date, on the day of the closing date.