How do I sell a house in Scotland?

Selling your house is one of the largest financial transactions you are ever likely to be involved in. In many ways, selling a house in Scotland is a mirror image of buying a house in Scotland once an offer is received. There is, however, the important aspect of marketing your house for sale. To do that, it is important to select an estate agent that provides a professional service with expert knowledge of the area where your house is located.

No matter whether this is your first house sale or your last, we believe it is important to understand the steps to be taken when you decide to sell a house in Scotland.

Bringing your house to market

Before we even begin to talk about selecting the right estate agent to deal with your sale, there are some essential things you should do when preparing to sell your home. These include decluttering and depersonalising your home. You should also deal with any minor repairs. Then make sure you stage your home for sale and that includes making sure the outside of your home is neat and tidy to give it that “drive by appeal”.

After that, it is a case of selecting a trusted, professional estate agent. We cannot stress enough the importance of selecting the right estate agent to market your house. You should be looking for an estate agent who has expert knowledge of the area where your house is located and has a track record of achieving sales in that area. The estate agent you select should ensure your property is widely promoted to maximise its exposure to the market. You should be looking for an estate agent who will guide you through every aspect of marketing your house and give you clear advice and feedback along the way.

The expectation of every seller is that suitable offers are received from people who want to buy the house and it is the job of your estate agent to encourage viewers to submit an offer. Once offers have been received, the legal process can begin.

Selecting the “right” offer to accept

Your estate agent will have gone through the offers you have received with you and will then pass on your preferred offer or offers to your solicitor. We cannot stress enough the importance of accepting the “right” offer for your house. As we explain in our article Why you might not want to accept the highest offer, it is not always the highest offer that is the best offer to accept. It is important to select an offer where there is a degree of certainty that the buyer will be able to complete the purchase of your house. If there are any suspensive conditions, this might enable the buyer to walk away from the purchase without liability. Your solicitor will advise you about these types of conditions when they start negotiating the missives on your behalf.

Negotiating the missives

The first stage in the house sale is creating the contract between the seller and the buyer. This starts off with the offer received from the buyer. The offer will contain a whole host of conditions, not all of which might be acceptable. Your solicitor will go through these with you and advise you on which conditions need to be adjusted or rejected.

Once that discussion has taken place, your solicitor will issue an acceptance. This acceptance is likely to be qualified. That means that whilst you are prepared to accept the offer, not all of the conditions are acceptable. Your solicitor will indicate which clauses are not acceptable, which are partly acceptable and may also insert additional conditions to meet your requirements on the sale. If the buyer is prepared to accept the terms of that acceptance, the buyer’s solicitor will then send a letter of acceptance and that will conclude the contract.

If, however, the terms of the qualified acceptance are not fully acceptable to the buyer, the buyer’s solicitor will send back a further qualified acceptance indicating which of your conditions are not or only partially acceptable. This process of going back and forth between solicitors continues until one party issues a final acceptance to the other. At that point, the contract will be in place. Before this point either the seller or buyer can walk away without there being any obligation to the other.

Solicitors call this exchange of letters Missives and if you would like to know more about this, please see our article: Buying or selling a house: What are Missives?

Providing the title and supporting reports

Usually, whilst the missives are ongoing, your solicitor will exhibit your title to the property to the buyer’s solicitor. In addition to the title, your solicitor will also have to provide a range of reports that the buyer’s solicitor will need to inspect. These include reports from the local authority advising on the status of any notices that may affect the property, planning permissions granted to neighbours as well as whether the roads, footpaths and sewers are public. In addition, depending on the location of the property, a Coal Authority Report might be required. This will provide information on whether the location has previously been worked for coal and whether there are any mine entries close to the boundaries of the house. Finally, a search needs to be provided in the property and personal registers. This type of report is needed to show that you own the house and whether, if you have a mortgage, there is any Standard Security that needs to be discharged and whether there is any legal impediment, such as an inhibition, preventing your sale of the house. All these reports are exhibited to the buyer’s solicitor.

As part of this process, the buyer will provide the deed, called a Disposition, that transfers ownership of the property to the buyer. We check that the Disposition is accurate and then have you sign it. We hold on to the Disposition until settlement when it is handed over in exchange for the price.

If you have a mortgage, discharging the Standard Security

When you take out a mortgage, your Lender will insist on holding a charge over your house. This charge, in Scotland, is called a Standard Security and it is registered in the Land Register against your title. That means when you sell your house, the loan needs to be repaid and the Standard Security discharged. To do this, we prepare a Discharge which the Lender will execute and return to us once we have redeemed your mortgage on the sale of your house. We then send the Discharge to the Land Register. This allows you to transfer a clear title to the property to the buyer.

Settling your sale with the buyer

On the date of entry for your sale, we will receive the purchase price from the buyer’s solicitor. In exchange for this, we will authorise release of the keys and send the signed Disposition to the buyer’s solicitor. We will also deliver any titles and other supporting documents along with the Disposition.

If you have a mortgage over the house, we will send the amount needed to repay the mortgage to your Lender and await delivery of the Discharge.

Post settlement matters

We will provide you with an account showing the sale price and the costs associated with the sale. We will either send the balance of the sale proceeds to you or, if you are buying a new house, transfer the balance to your purchase transaction for use as part of your deposit.

If there is a Discharge involved, when it arrives from the Lender, we will send it to the buyer’s solicitor to enable them to forward this to the Land Register.

This will complete the legal work involved in the sale of the house.

Our solicitors dealing with this type of work for clients have many years of experience in this area of law. They can answer all your questions about all aspects of the sale of your house. So, if you want to know how to sell a house in Scotland, why not pick up the phone and call our North Berwick office on 01620 892138 or Dunbar office on 01368 862746 or contact us through our website.