So upset. Cant stop crying

[MummyoftwoBG]

so 7 weeks ago we accepted an offer on our house in Scotland . We have been chasing our solicitor to get contracts signed as due to move in less than a week. Yesterday the buyers solicitor said they were not meeting with their clients until the day before the date of moving. The buyers want a week extension to think about and discuss the contracts . They set the date. We have already arranged all the movers, utilities, mail redirection etc, my daughter has even visited her new school. Knowing now the reputation this people have I am certain at the beginning of the week that we will have to remarket our home. We had an offer accepted in another home. I feel devastated and can’t stop crying. I’m dreading telling my daughter who has accepted moving away from her friends , she is on the Autistic spectrum so this is a big deal. I am currently wearing sunglasses to avoid her seeing my tears 💔

We fairly recently bought a house in Scotland and found its not the "much more protective system than most English people think.
We found the the following differences:
1.Estate agents don't seem to get involved at all once an offer has been accepted on a house. We do live in a very sleepy rural area it may be different in a big city. 2.You get a home buyers report before viewing this is tells you if there are any major structural issues and if something needs looking into further it then gives you the mortgageable value so before putting in an offer you know how much a lender will give you for that property this reflects any repairs etc that need to be done. Apparently only 1 in 10 sales fall through in Scotland compared with 1 in 3 in England and I suspect that these are two of the reasons why; you dont discover four weeks after you've put an offer in and paid for an expensive survey that the place is falling onto the ground and you know how much money you can borrow against the house so your offer reflects this. 3. Im under the impression that once your offer has been accepted its binding (I could be wrong about this) and therefore gazumping and gazundering doesn't take place. 4. You have to bid on a property and now as the market is so busy a closing date is usually set for bids, your bid is submitted by your solicitor to the buyers solicitor. When you submit your bid you have to detail your situation e.g. cash buyer, you detail your situation; mortgage, chain free, etc and then seller and their solicitor then look at all the bids and decide which one to go with. I might have got this wrong but a I understand that unless the buyer states otherwise they have to accept the highest bid if all other things are equal. So for example a friend could not sell her house to a family who needed a mortgage to buy with two small children (who would attend our tiny village school and keep it viable) because their bid was significantly lower than a cash buyer who she suspects is going to rent her house out on ABNB. 5. The bidding system is a bit of a nightmare you dont know if you've lost property because you were £50 less than the winning bid of £5000K less and you also don't know if your bid was successful because you were £35k higher than all the other bids, you cant use an ebay type system of bidding where you say you'll go up to X. The current general consensus is that you go in 20% over the asking price but what I dont understand is how that affects you mortgage because I thought a lender will only give you a % of the valuation on the initial survey. I just dont believe Scotland is up to its eyeballs in people with say an extra 20% over the valuation in cash plus the deposit, Im not wording this well but if a house is valued at 350K and you were planning on getting a 80% mortgage thats £280K but if you put a bid in thats 20% over the asking price thats £420K an extra £70K so basically a buyer needs £140k in cash to buy. Perhaps someone can enlighten me? I've also no idea how this works with a new build. 6. No deposit is paid up front we only stumped up money a week before we picked up the keys although we did have to prove that we had to cash. 7.Once a bid has been accepted the house is taken off the market unlike when we bought in London many years ago when the property wasn't taken off the market until we had our mortgage valuation booked even though our offer had been accepted. 8. We are waiting for our buyer (we are currently selling. house in England) to gt their mortgage offer when I tell my Scottish friends they dont understands why they didnt have a mortgage offer when they bid, not just a mortgage in principle offer but a definite mortgage offer, Im assuming this is related to the initial survey/valuation thats done here. Im happy to be corrected on any of the above but this is what I understand.
OP you have my full sympathy selling and buying is sooo stressful I dont know how the system can be improved to make it work better for both buyers and sellers but somehow it does need to be improved on both sides of the boarder. Good luck.

"unless the buyer states otherwise"
Sorry should read seller not buyer.

Any further forward?

They are not obliged to accept the highest offer - they can chose any or none

Yeah you don't have to accept the highest offer, you can accept whatever one you like. It's just most people do chose the highest one because a seller's background is less of an issue here because the chain aspect isn't as relevant.

And an offer isn't binding when it's accepted as such, but a seller cannot accept another offer once they have accepted one unless they change legal representation as the solicitors' code of conduct they follow precludes them from accepting further offers once one has been formally accepted.

You then sign the missives, which usually happens a lot earlier in the process than exchange does in England, and that's where you set a date for moving and the other details. If either party backs out at this stage they are liable to pay a hefty sum as compensation.