Solicittor's costs for sale & purchase
Discussion
You are correct. Solicitors are trying to make as much as they can in common with most professionals in a falling market. They charge what they can.
You could contact three of four local solicitors and offer a fee tender for the job. Multi partner firms are better because few lenders will accept single partner conveyancing. You could of course not require a mortgage at all but I still recommend multi partner firms for greater security.
Good Luck
You could contact three of four local solicitors and offer a fee tender for the job. Multi partner firms are better because few lenders will accept single partner conveyancing. You could of course not require a mortgage at all but I still recommend multi partner firms for greater security.
Good Luck
4sure said:
What prices have you been quoted so far ,just had the same thing with our conveyancing charging based on sale price ?
But a lot cheaper on the p/ex house we are taking.
Best so far is £525 on the sale (valued at £250K) and £1500 for the purchase (£675K) incuding the land registry fees. Both include searches.But a lot cheaper on the p/ex house we are taking.
Cogcog said:
4sure said:
What prices have you been quoted so far ,just had the same thing with our conveyancing charging based on sale price ?
But a lot cheaper on the p/ex house we are taking.
Best so far is £525 on the sale (valued at £250K) and £1500 for the purchase (£675K) incuding the land registry fees. Both include searches.But a lot cheaper on the p/ex house we are taking.
Do not, and I cannot stress this enough, do not go for the cheapest go for the most thorough. We bought our last place from a couple dealing with a national "conveyancing4U" type company who were the most unprofessional people I've ever had to deal with.
Their conveyancers wasted valuable time, shirked all responsibility, ignored phone calls and emails, not over trivial information either. We had four completion dates go by without getting any further with them, it was only with threats to them, the people we were purchasing off and their estate agent that they decided to get moving, all in the last hour - we actually completed and exchanged right up to the minute for our purchasers final deadline and I was ready to pull out of the whole thing right up until that point, they certainly were not idle threats either as I made myself quite clear at the time - 'one' of the issues which were not resolved up to that point was associated with being able to register absolute title after purchase - a pretty bloody big deal.
We always use our family solicitor who is reliable and thorough, our costs were iro £1500 for selling and buying but the transaction was made more complicated by the other party and involved more legwork so the bill was probably a few hundred more than it should have been.
Their conveyancers wasted valuable time, shirked all responsibility, ignored phone calls and emails, not over trivial information either. We had four completion dates go by without getting any further with them, it was only with threats to them, the people we were purchasing off and their estate agent that they decided to get moving, all in the last hour - we actually completed and exchanged right up to the minute for our purchasers final deadline and I was ready to pull out of the whole thing right up until that point, they certainly were not idle threats either as I made myself quite clear at the time - 'one' of the issues which were not resolved up to that point was associated with being able to register absolute title after purchase - a pretty bloody big deal.
We always use our family solicitor who is reliable and thorough, our costs were iro £1500 for selling and buying but the transaction was made more complicated by the other party and involved more legwork so the bill was probably a few hundred more than it should have been.
RV8 said:
Do not, and I cannot stress this enough, do not go for the cheapest go for the most thorough......
Paraphrasing, but true. We set our local solicitor on the case of securing us a house. The majority of our time with him was spent hearing (not listening to) annecdotes and long winded stories about him and his family and their house issues. We got no 'advice' from him and our pre-defined contract date was getting closer. This took weeks. In the end, after 2 visits to the potential puchase, our vendor decided to fabricate a phantom bidder to push our offer higher. Our solicitor made no effort to guide us.We then found an alternative property and reverted to a solicitor in Stirling (we're based in Glasgow), who requested a couple of hours to do some digging, came back to us with advice on where to bid (without requesting background on our financial limits) and secured the house for us in less than two days for significantly less than we intended to start bidding at. Money well spent on fees (will be just over the £1300 mark for $500k+ house).
Find a thorough solicitor and keep hold of them; they save a lot of grief in the long run.
Dr Rick
I also support the comments made previously about choosing quality and not the cheapest.
Buying and selling a house is a hugely expensive and emotional investment and at times very complicated, the solicitors fees involved are a far better investment than some of the other parties fees involved in the whole process.
Recently bought and sold and I used a solicitor recommended to me from a friend.
This solicitor is part of a big hitting legal firm and his fees reflected this. However, due to my business coming from a friends recommendation the solicitor straight away reduced his fee’s to meet the deals he does for my friend (friend has done several property deals over recent years with this solicitor) and he was extremely thorough and professional throughout the whole process.
I genuinely felt he had my best interests at heart every step of the way and offered lots of advice and consultation and I only had to mention the company name he works for to my financial advisor, sellers estate agent, my estate agent, mortgage company etc to guarantee in their mind that I was a serious buyer and to see a fear of god reaction in their faces and a quick turnaround to every request made of them.
I'm a solicitor, but I don't do that kind of work and would never think of trying to do my own conveyancing, because there are too many things that could go wrong. If the solicitor gets something wrong, it could cost you a very large amount of money and inconvenience. If he's doing a cheap, fixed-price job, it is more likely that something will be missed. It might be an acceptable risk on a relatively modern house in a street of similar houses, but with a more complex, higher value purchase, I think you'd be mad to go for the cheap option.
Sitting down for a meeting with the solicitor with your wife and going through the documentation and your requirements is not something I would give up to save a tiny percentage of the purchase price.
Sitting down for a meeting with the solicitor with your wife and going through the documentation and your requirements is not something I would give up to save a tiny percentage of the purchase price.
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