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solicitors fees
eljacko
Posts: 24 Forumite
Morning everyone,
I have just bought my first property and recently recieved my bill from the solicitor. Having read there information regarding charges I had expected a bill for £1000-£1200 the actual bill came to £1738.
The sale was not complicated I bought the house from my friend so no chains no unusual requests.
Would someone out there help me understand why this bill would be so high.
Thank you
Eljacko
I have just bought my first property and recently recieved my bill from the solicitor. Having read there information regarding charges I had expected a bill for £1000-£1200 the actual bill came to £1738.
The sale was not complicated I bought the house from my friend so no chains no unusual requests.
Would someone out there help me understand why this bill would be so high.
Thank you
Eljacko
0
Comments
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Did you not get a quote before you appointed them?0
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Hi there Eljacko
Can I suggest that before you pay the bill, that you ask your solicitor to break it down; there's no way of anyone knowing what you are being billed for without that! That should make clear what you're being billed for.
If the breakdown isn't clear, perhaps you could then post it here and people could help out, but your solicitor should be able to tell you what each of the costs are for.
Also, you might want to check if the fees you were quoted included VAT (mine never are, so I add it on).
HTH.
' <-- See that? It's called an apostrophe. It does not mean "hey, look out, here comes an S".0 -
Ask for a breakdown, typically a solicitor charges around £700 for their time and on top of that will be land registry charges, land searches charges etc and VAT.
Did you have to pay stamp duty, as that will be included in the total bill too?0 -
To be able to comment intelligently, it would be useful to have a breakdown of how the final figure is arrived at, and what items were not included in the original estimate. Sometimes they are lost in small print somewhere.RICHARD WEBSTER
As a retired conveyancing solicitor I believe the information given in the post to be useful assuming any properties concerned are in England/Wales but I accept no liability for it.0 -
Thank you all for the quick response.
My first bill was so complicated and confusing that I had to ask him 3 times
to re write it into a more legible script.
Ok I hope you are all sitting comfortably.
Bill 1
PAYMENTS RECEIPTS
PURCHASE PRICE 224,000.00
PROFESSIONAL FEES EX VAT 625.00 DEPOSIT FEES 500
SDLT FORM 75.00 DEPOSIT TO SELLERS 22,400.00
EXPEDITION FEES 75.00 MORTGAGE ADVANCE 202,999.00
TELEGRAPHIC TRANSFER FEE 35.00 TOTAL £225,899.00
PROFESSIONAL INDEMNITY CONTRIBUTION 77.75
POSTAGE ETC 29.00
VAT 17.5% 160.43 LESS FEES
MORTGAGE LEGAL FEES 507.00
PROFESSIONAL IND CONT 65.00
DISBURSEMENTS MORTGAGES INSURANCE FEE 50.00
STAMP DUTY 2,240.00 VAT 17.5% 108.85
HM LAND REGISTRY 220.00
HM LAND REGISTRY SEARCH FEE 4.00 DISBURSEMENTS
SEARCH FEES 355.29
LANDLORDS REGISTRATION FEE 58.75 MORTGAGE ARRANGEMENT FEE 1399.00
MORTGAGE TELEGRAHIC TRANSFER 30.00
LANDLORDS REGISTRATION FEE 58.75
BANKRUPTCY CHARGE 2.00
£227.955 £2,220.60
£223,678.4
BALANCE DUE £4,276.82
Still with me I hope,
So I called him to say that the price was too much and that I could not understand the bill and where all the extra charges were coming from.
New bill came through. COSTS DISBS VAT
COSTS AS AGREED 625.00 SEARCH FEES (PAID) 355.20
STAMP DUTY LAND TRANSACTION FORM 75.00 LAND REGISTRY FEE(PAID) 220.00
TELEGRAPH TRANSFER 35.00 STAMP DUTY (UNPAID) 2,240.00
PROFESSIONAL INSURANCE 77.75
POSTAGE TELEPHONE ETC 29.00
£841.75 £2815.29 £147.30
TOTAL COSTS DISBURSEMENTS AND VAT £3804.34
At this point you may need to have a rest.
Turning over the page was this,
COMPLETION STATEMENT
PURCHASE PRICE £224,000.00
APPORTIONMENTS (service charge & ground rent) 99.65
FREE HOLDERS NOTICE FEES 75.00
XXXXX COSTS 841.75
VAT 147.30
DISBURSEMENTS £2,815.29 £3,978.99
£227,978.99
LESS MORTGAGE ADVANCE (NET) £201,545.00
MONIES RECEIVED FROM YOU £26,400.00 £227.945.00
BALANCE DUE £33.99
PLEASE HELP!0 -
Looks like, the original fee was 625+ VAT.
On top of that there are always disbursements etc.
It seems you have bought a flat (correct?) and there are some charges from the freeholder, presumably answering queries on the lease and assigning the leasehold to you. These are unavoidable. It seems you have paid, within this, for the ground rent & service charge from your completion until the end of the quarter; which is acceptable.
The things that would annoy me are:
the extra charge (75) for completing the stamp duty form, I would have expected this to be included in the original quote, or at least separately identified when you were given the quote;
expedition fee (75), was there only a short time between exchange and completion? seems a little unfair to charge you for this.
professional indemnity insurance (77.75), is this insuring the solicitor against making a mistake, why is the solicitor charging you for this?
mortgages insurance fee (50), what is this?I'm a Forum Ambassador on the housing, mortgages & student money saving boards. I volunteer to help get your forum questions answered and keep the forum running smoothly. Forum Ambassadors are not moderators and don't read every post. If you spot an illegal or inappropriate post then please report it to forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com (it's not part of my role to deal with this). Any views are mine and not the official line of MoneySavingExpert.com.0 -
professional indemnity insurance (77.75), is this insuring the solicitor against making a mistake, why is the solicitor charging you for this?
quote]
Unfortunately quite a few solictitor's do charge clients for this silvercar. :mad:The bigger the bargain, the better I feel.
I should mention that there's only one of me, don't confuse me with others of the same name.0 -
Ask for a breakdown, typically a solicitor charges around £700 for their time and on top of that will be land registry charges, land searches charges etc and VAT.
Did you have to pay stamp duty, as that will be included in the total bill too?
Hi becks thanks for replying to my thread i have listed all the charges etc would you mind having a look its a bit confusing to say the least0 -
The things that would annoy me are:
the extra charge (75) for completing the stamp duty form, I would have expected this to be included in the original quote, or at least separately identified when you were given the quote;
expedition fee (75), was there only a short time between exchange and completion? seems a little unfair to charge you for this.
professional indemnity insurance (77.75), is this insuring the solicitor against making a mistake, why is the solicitor charging you for this?
mortgages insurance fee (50), what is this?
I agree with this view.
However solicitors can get away with this kind of thing if they make it clear at the beginning that these extras can/will be charged. So OP could have had an estimate on-line which referred vaguely to some Terms and Conditions on another web page or in writing with the Terms and Conditions (possibly described in a different way) attached. The bottom line figure on the estimate might have been lower, but there would be a note referring to the T&C. The solicitor will probably refer to them and say that OP signed to agree to them.
OP should get the fee earner who is acting for him to walk him through on the telephone all the calculations and explain why he is being charged for each item and where it says in the estimate that he would or might be charged for the item. If the fee earner who is dealing with the matter for OP will not do that, then OP should complain in writing to the Senior Partner of the firm that a simple explanation is being denied him.
I don't go in for all these spurious extras of the kind mentioned above but I still get clients phoning me saying they don't understand where I get my figures from, and I have to go through it all until they do understand. That's a major part of our job as conveyancing solicitors - making sure people understand what they are doing - and if OP's solicitor isn't making himself clear he is not doing his job.
If the T&C are too complicated and difficult to read then OP might have a legitimate complaint that the firm was deliberately setting out to confuse people by making it seem that the charges were lower than they actually were.RICHARD WEBSTER
As a retired conveyancing solicitor I believe the information given in the post to be useful assuming any properties concerned are in England/Wales but I accept no liability for it.0
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