Solicitors fees to purchase a small garage

danny1978

Hi all,

I have just purchased a small single garage with a yard area. It cost £8k. What would be a reasonable solicitors fee? The one that the agent suggested is £500 plus search fees. A bit steep I thought as he first said £300 + vat! There is no utilities connected, just a garage and bit of land at the back of houses.

Any advice appreciated!
:beer:

silvercar

Ring around some local solicitors.

Do you know the area? Are you getting a mortgage?

If the answers are yes and no, you could go to the local council and inspect recent planning applications for the area and the local plan. If that doesn't through up anything of interest you could decide not to do a search.

Any rights of access and wayleaves will be on the title deeds, what else would a search show you?

Richard_Webster

Ring around some local solicitors.

Do you know the area? Are you getting a mortgage?

If the answers are yes and no, you could go to the local council and inspect recent planning applications for the area and the local plan. If that doesn't through up anything of interest you could decide not to do a search.

Any rights of access and wayleaves will be on the title deeds, what else would a search show you

A lot of sense here. Only point is that whilst Sivercar's suggestion is probably a practical answer for a lot of people, if I were acting for a client buying such a garage, I would be wary of telling him not to have a local search carried out. There could always be unlikely things OP had not thought of....

So I would want client to confirm in writing to me he didn't want a search.

I think £500 + VAT is a bit OTT for the amount of work involved.

WillowCat

I bought then sold a garage recently for approx the same price, and paid £250 +vat + disbursements for each transaction. This was with a local solicitor I trusted.

danny1978

Hi, Thanks for the replies.

It will be cash, and I dont know the area all that well, its about 40 miles away from my home. Friends know the area, and its Ashford, right near the international station, so a sound investment for later on in life.

I will be looking at getting Planning Permission (will make a new thread for that) to develop the garage with an extra storey on top, or apex roof with dormas if the extra storey on top idea fails. I am going to pop down and speak with the council with some rdrawings to get some idea on what they think is acceptable.

Agree with richard, what is OP? Also what is a search and what do they reveal? First property I have bought in the UK! May start to get on the ladder with a house in a few more months now that prices are getting realistic!

Thanks.

456789

danny1978 wrote: »

what is OP?

Opening Poster = Person who started the topic = You in this case

Richard_Webster

Also what is a search and what do they reveal?

All kinds of things, too many to explain in detail, but some things that people think are included, aren't. e.g details of planning permissions given in the locality.

Robert_Sterling_3

My guess is that the Solicitor's fee for work done is £500 + VAT and that you would also have to pay for the local search. :eek:

planning_officer

You should check also that this garage you are buying isn't required by a planning condition to only be used for parking for a particular development to which it is connected! If that's the case, if you don't live there, you can't use it! Depending on the age of the garage this may not be the case - the older it is, generally speaking, the less chance of having such a restriction.

Your idea of putting a first floor sounds rather dodgy to me - although admittedly I don't know the area or how near the garage is to neighbouring properties. If it's going to look odd (is it a flat roofed garage? is it part of a row of garages?) then that's unlikely to be acceptable. Also, if, like you say, it's just to the rear of a house, will it look intrusive to the owners of the house? Will they be able to see it? What's the first floor for - a small flat/bedsit? That would raise a lot of other planning issues! You could post a link to Microsoft Live Maps or Multimap.