What does 'Sale Agreed' mean when buying a property?

Find out what Sale Agreed means when you are buying a property. 'What does Sale Agreed mean?' plus over 150 other property related terms and jargon in plain English

Sale Agreed

The term "Sale Agreed" (also sometimes referred to as "Offer Agreed" or "Under Offer") simply means that the buyer has made a financial offer and the seller of the property has accepted that offer.

This is usually the first step in purchasing a property. You say, "I offer your £200,000 for the property" and the buyer says, "OK, I accept."

However there is nothing contractually binding on either party to complete the sale until contracts have been exchanged.

As such the property becomes Sold Subject to Contract.

Slightly confusing here is that different agents or websites use all four terms at this point:

• Sale Agreed
• Offer Agreed/li>
• Under Offer
• Sold Subject to Contract (or Sold STC)

All four are valid at this point but "Sold Subject to Contract" is also used after contracts have exchanged while the other three only refer to a time before exchange.

During the period before exchange both parties can walk away with no penalties and both parties can renegotiate the price (up or down).

Because it is a very insecure time for both buyer and seller it is always advisable to make sure the time between Sale Agreed and Exchange of Contracts is as short as possible (because Time Costs Deals) and much of my ebook How to Really Buy a Property is about how you can achieve this.

For more detail on the term Sale Agreed see Under Offer.