When you receive an offer on your home, it should be in writing. Verbal offers are not required to be accepted by your agent, nor are you required to be made aware of their content. You will have a limited amount of time to consider and respond to the offer, so it is important that you start work on this as soon as you receive it.

The offer will be presented on a recognised form, usually the FAR/BAR Contract for Sale and Purchase. This means that most of the wording is standard (although this does not mean that you should not make sure you read and understand it!), and the most important aspects are the areas that are filled in by the buyers' agent, together with any attached addenda.

When you have studied the contract you may find it wholly acceptable, in which case all you have to do is countersign it and it becomes a legally binding contract on both parties as soon as it is transmitted back to the buyer.

If you find that one or more aspects of it are not acceptable to you, you can put in a counter-offer. The buyer may accept your revised terms, or reject them, or come up with a further counter-offer. Eventually either a contract will be signed by both sides with mutually acceptable terms, or it will not, in which case the offer is 'dead'.

The contract may come with one or more addenda, or conditions. This is a convenient way of introducing additional terms into the formal contract, and in the case of short term rental homes it is the place to cover furniture and furnishings, advance rental bookings, etc. As with the contract itself, the seller may accept, reject or modify any terms proposed in an addendum, or introduce additional terms in the form of a new addendum.