Conveyancing fee's £500 more than expected! Do the fees seem genuine? please help.

merlinormartin

Hey All I'm a FB in the process of purchasing a Repo house. I have just recieved my "conveyancing bill" the bill is around £500 more than their "anticipated expenses" and seems excessive I was hoping that someone would be able to look at the fee's and advise if they are standard charges. I have googled "mortgage admin fee" and dont seem to be able to find much information about it. The bank arranged my mortgage and i have already paid them £999 for it

Amount of Money Received from you
Search Fee £295.00

Subtotal£99265.00

Professional Fees
Professional Fees £449.00
VAT on Professional Fees £67.35
Mortgage Admin Fee £399.00
VAT on Mortgage Admin Fee £59.85
Stamp Duty Land Tax Return Fee £75.00
VAT on Stamp Duty Land Tax Submission Fee £11.25
Obtaining Quote/Placing Indemnity Policy on Risk Fee £36.00
VAT on Obtaining Quote/Placing Indemnity Policy on Risk Fee £5.40

Disbursements and Other Fees
Search Pack Charge £130.43
VAT on Search Pack Charge £19.56
Land Registration Fees £150.00
Money Transfer Fees £36.00
VAT on Money Transfer Fees £5.40
Electronic Validation of Identity £20.00

Subtotal£1464.24

Balance required to complete £12199.24

Many Thanks!

dwsjarcmcd

Did you get a quote from them first?

Not an expert on the VAT issue but I'm not sure that it is applicable on these lines e.g. Mortgage Admin fee (actually what is this if your a FTB and have paid an arrangement fee of £995)

Do you really pay VAT on money transfer fees, search packs etc!

One thing I can tell you is that an electronic Identity Search takes about 2 minutes and costs max £2.00

No doubt someone from the legal profession can comment on the VAT issue

Ilian2008

Hello, What did your Solicitors outline at the start? Your solicitors fees are only 449 plus Vat and a Land Transaction preparation fee of £75 plus Vat which is usual But im unclear about the mortgage admin fee. is that their charge for doing the work for the lender or is it the lenders admin charge? If it was the lenders charge i wouldnt have thought vat would have been added.

The disbursments look fine though. They must incur a charge to validate your identity and pass it on to you.

Obtaing an indemnity quotation etc is usually included within the main conveyancing fee but some firms may see this as extra work.

merlinormartin

Thanks for your replies!

At the start i recieved a document "Illustration of fees & anticipated expenses"

Conveyancing fees:£449.00

Anticipated Expenses:
Vat on above fees: £78.58
Land Registration Fees: £150.00
Allowance for Conveyancing Searches (inc VAT): £150.00
Land Tax Return Preparation: £88.12
Electronic Validation Of Identity (£10.00 per name): £20.00

Total Anticipated Expenses: £486.70
Total Conveyancing Expenses: £935.70

the mortgage admin fee. is that their charge for doing the work for the lender or is it the lenders admin charge?

Hmmm .. perhaps your right, perhaps i have to cover the lenders charge.

PasturesNew

There's a whole bunch of lender costs in there:

Mortgage Admin Fee £399.00
VAT on Mortgage Admin Fee £59.85

Ilian2008

i wish Solicitors would just help make it clear. I am one by the way and get so frustrated when i hear about these things. A 1 minute phone call to talk you through it would save any confusion to explain. I try to put myself int he position of the client and think what would i think if i was the client? I remortgaged my house recently and used the lenders solicitors for free legals (i wasnt working for myself then and the lender wouldnt haven allowed me to act for myself anyway) and the 'conveyancers' just made heavy weather out of things and wrote to me with conflicitng information because its all standard paragraphs popping out of the computer at the touch of a button. Sorry. Rant over

dwsjarcmcd

merlinormartin wrote: »

Thanks for your replies!

At the start i recieved a document "Illustration of fees & anticipated expenses"

Conveyancing fees:£449.00

Anticipated Expenses:
Vat on above fees: £78.58
Land Registration Fees: £150.00
Allowance for Conveyancing Searches (inc VAT): £150.00
Land Tax Return Preparation: £88.12
Electronic Validation Of Identity (£10.00 per name): £20.00

Total Anticipated Expenses: £486.70
Total Conveyancing Expenses: £935.70


Hmmm .. perhaps your right, perhaps i have to cover the lenders charge.

Given you got a quote from them, I would certainly challenge this fee.

terryw

The main difference is this fee for acting for the lender. Really any such fee is nonsensical as the solicitor is already doing the vast majority of this work for you anyway. Most firms of honest solicitors (an oxymoron) would include this "work" in their original estimate, but your guys do not appear to have done so, so it looks as though you have been taken for a sucker and it looks as though you will have to pay.

I would certainly query this and point out that this was not included in their original quotation although they were well aware that a mortgage was required.

Having said all of the above, remember that a solicitor's main objective is profit-maximization, the same as any other commercial organisation, and all that stuff about acting in the client's best interests is merely guff to camouflage the level of profit that is made. Effectively there is no-one that you can complain to. The solicitors trade unions will only take action against really really blatant rip-offs (e.g the low-life firm who ripped off all the miners' compensation just this week).

Learn from your experience. Obtain several estimates and ensure that you know what is included, exactly the same as if you were employing a rat-catcher or a window-cleaner. There are some decent firms of solicitors around but you have to search hard to find them.

terryw

Ilian2008

Im sorry it appears you have been burnt before terry. A solicitor is heavily regulated and the hassle of doing something wrong is just not worth the time and effort and expense of putting it right especially the damage to goodwill. I think the issue is that it hasnt been explained and thats a communication problem. Sometimes Solicitors assume far too readily that they lay person will understand and thats wrong.

There will be very litte profit in the transaction for a solicitor once you have taken all the overheads into consideration and that is why volume conveyancing took off and is often guilty of providing a substandard service.

Merlin or Martin i cant see that the anticipated costs and expenses is in fact a quote. Just call them and ask them to break it down for you. Remember that they work for you.

terryw

Ilian2008 wrote: »

Im sorry it appears you have been burnt before terry. A solicitor is heavily regulated and the hassle of doing something wrong is just not worth the time and effort and expense of putting it right especially the damage to goodwill. I think the issue is that it hasnt been explained and thats a communication problem. Sometimes Solicitors assume far too readily that they lay person will understand and thats wrong.

There will be very litte profit in the transaction for a solicitor once you have taken all the overheads into consideration and that is why volume conveyancing took off and is often guilty of providing a substandard service.

Merlin or Martin i cant see that the anticipated costs and expenses is in fact a quote. Just call them and ask them to break it down for you. Remember that they work for you.

You're right I did get burnt once......forty years ago, when the monopolistic charges were really obscene. Since then after buying and selling about sixty houses, I have only used solicitors where a mortgage is involved. Partially to save money but mainly to keep in control of the whole proceedings.

FWIIW, I sold a house last year and obviously did the clerical work involved myself.. Initially the solicitors for the buyer wrote to the buyer stating in writing that I was committing a CRIMINAL act. This calumny really annoyed me as I am an upstanding member of society, and when they refused to correct this, I complained to the heavy regulation authorities to whom you refer. They refused to do anything........the main purpose of these regulatory bodies is justify solicitors' charges. But that is just my opinion. I did of course make sure that the buyer of my house knew the truth that their solicitor had told them a deliberate lie, and I further ensured that this guy and all of his chums and family would never use that firm again. I fell just short of informing them about the said solicitor's criminal conviction concerning sheep!;)

OP, sorry about going off topic.

terryw

merlinormartin

Thanks for all you comments and advice.

It seems i will have to put this into Terryw's "been burnt pile" and learn from it

Many Thanks!