Under Offer & Sold STC

Sold 'Subject to Contract' (STC) or 'Under Offer' (UO) means that the homeowner has accepted an offer from a buyer but the paperwork is not yet complete. Under offer (UO) is also used by some Estate Agents to indicate that an offer has been made, but not yet accepted.

You can still enquire about an Sold STC or UO property as the sale is not complete until the signed contracts are exchanged. Technically the property is still available.

It may still be worth contacting the estate agent to discuss the strength of the accepted offer, particularly as there is no legal obligation on homeowner or homebuyer to complete the sale. On average about 15% of Sold STC or UO properties come back on the market after the sale has failed to proceed.

STCM

The house buying and selling system in Scotland is slightly different in that once offers are made they are legally binding if accepted; there is no 'subject to contract' stage. However the concluding paperwork (known as missives) may in rare cases fall through hence we use Sold Subject to Conclusion of Missives (Sold STCM).

Reserved

A new build property is reserved when a homebuyer has paid a reservation fee to acquire it. The homebuyer generally has a period of 28 days to exchange contracts from reservation date although this can change according to developer. If they don't complete contracts the property becomes available again.

Reserved properties are generally withdrawn from sale and are often not subject to any price increases.

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