House buying in Scotland

We are currently about to bid on a house in Scotland and I have to say, when it comes to house buying systems, the Norwegians are streets ahead.

In the Scottish system you have to place a blind-bid. That is to say that there is a minimum price, then beyond that anyone else who is interested gets to submit a sealed bid, in an envelope on a specific day. There is no comeback and no second chance.

This is fuckin horrible! You end up in the hideous position where you are trying to second guess a lot of people you have never met are going to do. There is a very high chance that you either miss by a few thousand quid or that you bid way over the odds and throw away 10's of thousands of pounds unnecessarily.

In Norway the system is way more civilised. On the closing day you have an open bidding round where the estate agent lists all the people who are interested and then calls them up in turn. Then people either drop out or up the price, until you have a winner. That is so much better, you know how much you have to spend, how much you think the place is worth and if you lose it's because somebody wants the place more than you or has more cash. At least it's honest and open. I can't imagine why you would not think that is the fairest system.

Still you can't fight the system but if one more person says to me "just forget about everyone else and bid what you think its worth" I will lose it! Its utter bullshit, imagine going to the supermarket for a litre of milk and at the checkout the till-doris says "what do you think its worth?" You say "70p?" She says nope, you can't have it, come back tomorrow and try again".

Utter nonsense - wish us luck!