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If in 2023 you are planning on moving north of the border, it may be helpful for you to understand some of the differences between the Scottish and English property conveyancing processes.

Here at Macnabs we are frequently instructed by people looking to relocate from England to Scotland, even more so over the last few years with clients looking to move out of city centres for a more rural lifestyle as the work life balance has changed.

There are many differences between Property Law in Scotland and England, and it may be helpful to outline some of the main differences:

• If you are buying in Scotland you will need a Solicitor that can deal with the Scottish system, so normally a Scottish Solicitor.
• If you are selling in England you will need both an English Solicitor for your sale and a Scottish Solicitor for your purchase.
• Due to the different legal processes and practices between Scotland and England it can seem a daunting prospect, but the truth is it does not need to be. Macnabs have years of experience specialising in assisting our clients in making the move north of the border as simple as possible.

The main difficulty tends to be the point at which the contracts for each transaction become legally binding.

• In England the transaction becomes legally binding upon the “exchange of contracts” and it is important to note that this can happen right up until the date of completion. In England, there are a number of property searches and reports that require to be approved prior to completion and that can cause delays with progressing the Scottish transaction. Until the English contracts are exchanged, either party can walk away from the transaction.

• In Scotland the transaction becomes legally binding upon the “conclusion of missives”. The missives are the contract in Scotland and is normally a three-step process forming the Offer, the written acceptance or Qualified Acceptance and the concluding missive. Up until this point either party can walk away from the transaction without paying any financial penalty to the other.

Due to these differences, when you are moving from England to Scotland and are funding your Scottish purchase with your English sale proceeds it is vital that missives are not concluded in Scotland until you have exchanged contracts in England.  Otherwise you would find yourself being legally bound to purchase in Scotland, with the risk of your English sale falling through, and thereby not having the sale proceeds to fund your purchase.  This would result in being in breach of the missives in Scotland and potentially a substantial penalty.

It is important to remember that having an English sale should not prevent you from submitting an offer for a Scottish property prior to the exchange of contracts as your offer would be conditional upon the sale of your English property.  This is very common and even if your offer is accepted, you are not legally bound until we get to the conclusion of the missives.

At Macnabs we are highly experienced in the complexities of these processes and will direct you through each stage. It is also important that we have continued communication both with yourself and your English Solicitor to enable the desired outcome of obtaining the keys to your new Scottish home. We recently acted for Steve Knight and his family who moved from England to Scotland:

"I guess like many people’s stories ours began with the events of early 2020 with the arrival of coronavirus. Lockdown changed us all, and circumstances forced us to re-evaluate our lives, and to reassess our priorities and our future. After drawing up a list of pros and cons (the pros won us all round and the cons always had a solution) we decided to move from our home in Norfolk to Scotland.

Without knowing where exactly we would be buying a property we looked for a city firm who would be big enough to help wherever we ended up, Perth of course seemed the sensible place to look as it was central to our search area but also far enough south to be relatively easy to reach if necessary and it was at this point that Macnabs joined the team.

I knew that we had chosen well from the first telephone call, everyone who has helped us from Macnabs has been so friendly, competent and efficient. We chatted about the Scottish system and very quickly we knew we were in safe hands who would steer us through the process and keep us safe.

We’re now settled in Aberdeenshire and are loving the new house and the new life. Despite all of the delays, looking back it was never an overly stressful experience. A lot of the reason for that is the excellence of the team that we had around us, we were very lucky that we had found Macnabs and the solicitors and estate agent in England. We always felt that they all worked for us and protected us throughout the whole process."

If you are thinking of making the move to Scotland we would be delighted to assist you and would be happy to answer any questions you may have.