Scot's law when buying and selling

[dancemom]

Can anyone advise me at what process in the buying a property procedure that you are financially tied in and would be penalised if you pulled out?

Is it on exchange or once the offer is formally accepted?

Scot's law specifically thank you

Once Missives are signed. That could be a couple of weeks after verbal agreement, but there has been a tendency to spin this out where I am in the last couple of years.

I don’t know the English system so don’t know if that translates to exchange or formal acceptance.

In Scotland it's once you conclude the missives.

Perfect, thank you everyone

Once Missives are concluded. Usually, on average around 8-10 weeks after your formal offer has been submitted and accepted. Missives can conclude a couple of weeks before you actually move. It can all depend on how big your chain is and who is waiting on loan papers as well as locating your deeds, and any conditions within the standard clauses needing work.

When missives conclude.

It used to be a lot earlier in the process - when we first bought about 15 years ago, the missives were concluded a few weeks in to the process. I liked that because it meant everyone was committed.

We last bought 18 months ago and the people we bought from were incredibly slow and unbothered (they went on two three week holidays between accepting our offer and the day the sale went through). The missives didn't conclude until the week before the agreed move date. I nearly went insane. We couldn't get the kids school places in the town we were moving to without proof the missives had concluded.

I didn't like that as much. Plus we had concluded missives on our sale weeks before on the basis we were constantly about to conclude on the purchase. It wasn't fun.

This was really bad practice from your solicitor. We have always been cautioned to not sign the missives for the sale before the purchase missives are confirmed as ready to sign. Obviously unless you are happy to move into rented/family etc.

Often the missives are physically signed, but just sit with the solicitors until they agree that they are formally signed once everything is ready. Saves a mad rush to actually sign them on an agreed date. The formal signing is the solicitors sending all this signed paperwork to each other. Not sure if they still use fax/courier or have finally moved to email.