Part 2: From Viewings to Offers — A Complete Guide to the Estate Agency Process

In our previous article we wrote about the first stages of selling your home, including how to prepare your home, the process of having photography carried out and marketing material prepared, the preparation of the Home Report and then the marketing of your property online and elsewhere.

But what happens next?

Step 6: After Viewings

Your property is now on the market and you have started showing it to potential buyers. Once you have had some people through your door viewing your property, we will follow up with each person to try to get their feedback. This is important because we need to know if the interested parties are likely to go on to offer or if they should be disregarded as potential purchasers for your property.

We will typically contact a viewer as soon as possible after their viewing has taken place to request feedback from them. Most people will be happy to provide feedback. From some this won’t be particularly detailed and in some cases unfortunately the feedback will be negative. It might be that the viewer may not have liked the property at all or it might be that they liked it but that there was one aspect of it that was not going to be suitable for them and that they were not intending to take their interest any further. Sadly some viewers will not actually respond to feedback requests, although this in itself can be indicative of someone who is perhaps not likely to be progressing.

Whilst we are always hoping for positive feedback, negative feedback can be useful and can indicate if adjustments need to be made. What we are after of course is to hear that the viewer liked the property and is interested in it. These are the people who are potential buyers of your home. We always try and find out as much information as possible from viewers including what their position is; are they ready to progress a purchase or do they still need to do something else first such as sell? If they are selling, are they already on the market or are they still at a relatively early stage in their house moving journey? If they like the property but are not quite ready to progress we will always offer a further viewing, to answer any further questions they might have and to share the Home Report with them if they have not already seen it.

We will share the collected feedback with you so that you know how things are going.

Step 7: Notes of Interest

If one of your viewers is very interested in your property then they may ‘note interest’. The process of noting interest is not always well understood, particularly as this is not something that happens in England. In Scotland a note of interest is a notification by a potential buyer to us as the selling agents that they are really interested in the property and may wish to offer. It will most commonly come from the potential buyer’s solicitor. An unrepresented party can make a note of interest without a solicitor but it tends to carry less weight so we will normally ask them to instruct a solicitor to formally note interest on their behalf.

The note of interest is not binding on anyone. The person noting interest need not follow up with an offer and indeed they may well have noted interest on more than one property. They may well wish to submit an offer but not yet be in a position to do so. Similarly, the note of interest does not oblige you as the seller to accept or consider an offer from that person. If you receive an offer from someone else and you wish to take that offer then you are perfectly entitled to do so notwithstanding the note of interest from someone else.

Notes of interest are however an important element of the Scottish sale process as they are how we typically gauge who is really interested. We will take the opportunity, when receiving the note of interest, to obtain as much information as possible about this potential buyer. This would include some detail on their position. Do they need a mortgage? If so, have they already obtained a mortgage Agreement in Principle? Do they need to sell? If selling, is their property already on the market? Is it already under offer?

The potential buyer will likely also expect some information from us. They will want to know if there are any other notes of interest and they will then expect to be updated if a closing date is fixed or indeed if an offer is accepted from another party.

We will of course inform you of any notes of interest received, the number of notes of interest and the detail received alongside them as this will help inform how we proceed from there.

Step 8: Offers

An offer is where one of your interested parties makes you an offer to purchase your property. Since you started the selling process, this is what you have been waiting for: somebody offering you a price.

Sometimes we know the offer is coming. We will have been collecting feedback from viewers and someone might have said that they are very interested and would be offering; we may have also already received a note of interest from the party who wishes to offer. Offers do however sometimes come out of the blue.

In most cases the offer will come to us from the interested party’s solicitor and will often be verbal initially. Their solicitor will phone us up and tell us what their client wishes to offer. The first detail you will want to know is the price that they have offered and obviously that is important, but it is also very important that we know what conditions the offer is subject to. Some offers might be from ‘cash buyers’ who don’t require any mortgage, a sale or anything else in order to proceed. Someone in this position is your ideal buyer but unfortunately there are not a great number of cash buyers around. In most cases an offer will be conditional on something else. One of the most common conditions will be that the buyer requires a mortgage and they will make their offer conditional on their mortgage application being approved. They will not be in a position to proceed with the purchase if they don’t get the mortgage they need.

Another reasonably common condition is a sale condition. Unless they are a first time buyer many people buying a property will also be selling their existing property at the same time. As a seller, you should always consider the circumstances carefully before accepting an offer that is subject to a sale. The concern is that if the buyer requires to sell their property and cannot manage to do that then your sale cannot proceed and will likely fall through as a result. This is why the detail of the sale condition is very important. It might be that the buyer needs to sell and isn’t yet on the market, which means you will then need to wait until they have marketed their property and then found their own buyer. There is also a chance that your buyer may end up accepting an offer that is also subject to another sale and you end up in a ‘chain’. If you are happy to accept an offer from a purchaser who is subject to sale it is important to consider the location and condition of the sale property together with the expectations of your purchaser towards their own sale. Is the property in a good location and likely to sell and is your buyer willing to accept a reasonable price to achieve a sale within a reasonable timescale. It is possible however that your buyer makes their offer conditional on a sale but they do already have a sale underway. This is usually a positive development but we will still want to know what stage that sale is at.

Some offers are dependent on other things. If the purchaser has identified some issues with your property, perhaps from studying the Home Report, they might wish to have their offer conditional on having these issues looked at. This could perhaps be a specialist investigation of damp or woodworm or other issues which have been identified, or it could be for a further survey of the property.

An offer is the start of a negotiation. In some cases you might wish to accept the first offer received but in other cases that offer will be refused, in which case you might make a counter offer or leave the buyer to offer again, hopefully with a higher price or better conditions.

We will always advise you on the strength of an offer but it will ultimately be your decision whether or not you are happy to accept it.

Step 9: Closing Date

Although many offers are received in the way described above, with a verbal offer coming in from an interested party’s solicitor, in other cases we will fix a closing date. This will typically happen where you have multiple interested parties. Where you have two or more notes of interest you can fix a closing date. This is where the interested parties are notified of a date and time when their best and final offers should be submitted. Often the closing date will be fixed a week or more ahead so that all interested parties have time to speak with their solicitors and plan their offers. Sometimes where there are multiple buyers needing a quick decision, a closing date can be fixed at short notice.

At the closing date the offers will arrive in writing from the solicitors acting for interested parties. Those offers will set out the price that each is offering as well as the conditions that those offers are subject to. Once the deadline has passed we will review all of the offers received and will then arrange to discuss these with you, giving you advice on the strengths and weaknesses of each offer and in many cases recommending to you which should be accepted. It is however again always your decision which offer should be accepted.

The preferred offer will not always be the highest priced offer. An offer with a higher price which is subject to various conditions might well lose out to a slightly lower offer from a buyer in a better position whose offer has less or no conditions in it.

Good practice is to respond to the offering parties as soon as possible after the closing date as they will all be anxiously waiting for news. Sometimes however a seller will need more time to make a decision, perhaps to discuss the offers with others involved in their sale, in which case we will warn the solicitors for the various interested parties that this is happening.

Once a decision is made we contact the solicitors for each party to advise whether or not they have been successful.

Step 10: Accepting an offer

Once an offer has been accepted, whether this is an offer that has been negotiated or an offer which has been received at a closing date, you then have a deal agreed to sell your home. This doesn’t mean it is actually ‘sold’. That will only happen once all of the conveyancing has been completed but it does mean that your property is ‘under offer’. At this stage we would pass the offer over to one of our team of solicitors who will then attend to the conveyancing on your behalf. As Solicitor Estate Agents our solicitors are involved from an early stage, often obtaining titles and other relevant information before your property is even on the market, so that they are ready to commence the conveyancing immediately on your acceptance of an offer. We will write in more detail about the conveyancing process in a future blog but we should explain that the Estate Agency process isn’t actually finished at this stage.

Although an offer has been accepted we don’t yet remove your property details from the various portals and websites where it is advertised and we will not take down your ‘for sale’ board. This is because in some cases offers fall through. Although most offers do proceed, some unfortunately do not. Typically an offer that has more conditions in it is more likely to fall through. An offer that is dependent on a sale in particular is vulnerable to a problem arising on the buyer’s sale or someone else selling within the same chain. Sadly some transactions therefore fall through and if that happens we want to be in a good position to remarket your property immediately which is why our estate agents will still be actively monitoring your sale until such time as your missives have concluded and then your sale is settled. In particular we will keep details of anyone who had previously noted interest or viewed so that these parties could be contacted again in the event that a sale were to fall through.

Our estate agents will also play a part in arranging any further access for a buyer in the latter stages of the conveyancing, arranging access also for any surveyors involved in mortgage valuations or similar, and then the handover of keys at settlement.

Selling your home can feel like a complex process, but with the right guidance and support it becomes far more straightforward and manageable. From preparing your property for the market through to negotiating offers and progressing your sale to completion, every stage benefits from experienced advice and proactive communication.

At Blackwood & Smith, our Estate Agency and Conveyancing teams work closely together to guide you through every step of your move, ensuring that your sale progresses as smoothly as possible from start to finish. Whether you are thinking about putting your property on the market or are ready to begin the process, our experienced team is here to help.

To find out more about our estate agency services or to arrange a free valuation, please contact our Estate Agency team today. We would be delighted to assist you with your move.