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Offer and Acceptance

The next most important element in a contract of sale is the part of offer and the acceptance. The part of offer in a contract is showing the readiness of the one part, in legal terms the offeror, to proceed with a contract along with the intention to commit to it, as long as it is accepted by the party to which it is addressing, ie the offeree. On the other hand acceptance to an offer implies the final and unreserved conformity towards the terms of an offer. It is highly important that the acceptance matches the offer exactly, so that the contract is binding. The contract suggests an offer from one party to another party and implies that the other party accepts the offer.

To make it simple the vendor offers to sell an asset for an indicative amound of €1000 but without the buyer's acceptance of this offer the contract is not binding to sell the specific asset. In case the buyer counter offers the vendor to purchase the specific asset with another amount this directly means that the buyer is rejecting the vendors original offer meaning that there is no binding agreement between them. But if the seller accepts the counter offer then the contract is enforced. In general the acceptance of a contract is only enforced by law right after it is communicated to the offeror. In the same way there is no contract created when a person declares acceptance on the document but keeps the referred document to himself/herself as the acceptance of an offer must be brough to the attention of the offerer. In the case where it is requested that the acceptance is required to be notified to the offerer in a specific way then the acceptance can only be enforceable in that specific way only.

An offer may be terminated by withdrawal of one of the parties involved or by lapse of time. Submitting an offer is defined by the date the offeree must commuicate his/hers acceptance to the other party.

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