Advice needed - SDLT1 Land Transaction Return

yzyz

Hi All,

We are buying a house and we are close to contract exchange now. Our solicitor would charge us £42+VAT for completing the SDLT1 form so we are considering doing it by ourselves. Another reason is we don't know how careful the solicitor may be, as on SDLT6 it says 'It is always the responsibility of the purchaser to make sure that the information given in the return is complete and correct'.

Anyway we are confident in almost all the answers we will be giving in the form (mainly because our case is very simple). However we still would like to ask for some advice on the following issues:

Question 9: we are first-time buyers and the purchase price will be lower than £250,000, so the answer should be 'Yes'?
Question 14: shall we put 0 here?
Question 15: shall we put 0 here? or leave it empty?

Question 10 (and other questions about amount of money): shall we include commas? E.g., shall we use 100,000 or 100000?

Question 38: this is the most confusinig one, so we did some search on the web, but this only made us more confused. On http:// www. ros. gov. uk/ pdfs/ sdlt/ newsletter.pdf it says "If you can’t get the vendor’s address then the address of the property being sold by the vendor can be entered", but on http:// www. hmrc. gov. uk/ so/ newsletter16-5.htm it says "Please remember that we do not want the property address shown as the vendor’s address, unless the vendor is going to remain there" and "‘care of the vendor’s solicitor’ is preferable to entering the property address". So, what are we supposed to put in here? (Sorry I had to insert some spaces in the urls above as urls are not allowed in the message).

Thanks very much for any advices!

sonastin

My advice - pay the £42!

I did my own SDLT1 form when I bought the freehold for my house. The purchase price was only £1350 so I didn't want to pay a solicitor on top of that but it was one of the most confusing and difficult forms I've ever had to fill in. If I could have paid £50 to make it go away, I would have done. You're obviously facing a similar level of confusion as I did...

silvercar

If your solicitor completes the form wrongly, you have their professional indemnity insurance to fall back on should a mistake occur. If you fill the form in wrongly, you will have no redress for any mistakes.

That said I think it is slightly off for a solicitor to quote separately for this week and it should be included in the fee quoted for the legal work on the purchase.

If you have a mortgage the solicitor should insist on completing the form as he is liable to the mortgage lender for ensuring the lender's charge on the property is documented.

yzyz

sonastin and silvercar, many thanks for your kind replies. I agree that it is less risky and less messy to let the solicitors completing this form. On the other hand, if this is a piece of work they should not charge for, why should we spoil them by paying them doing it? plus we are so close to completing the form now.

It's monday now and I am going to send the above questions to our solicitor and see how he replies.

silvercar

I didn't say they shouldn't charge, I said they should have included it in their original quote.

yzyz

silvercar wrote: »

I didn't say they shouldn't charge, I said they should have included it in their original quote.

Sorry to have misunderstood you, but some people here did say it should be part of the solicitor's job to complete the form.

Anyway, the answer from our solicitor is:
Question 9: 'Yes' and Code 28 is the correct answer for first-time buyers;
Question 38: 'c/o the vendor's solicitor' can be put here;

I found out on HM's website about the format of currency fields; no commas should be included. In fact if a comma is placed between numbers then it may be read as a 0, and inflate the amount concerned.


I have now completed the form, and I am going to send it to our solicitor. Fingers crossed.

tux900

yzyz wrote: »

I have now completed the form, and I am going to send it to our solicitor. Fingers crossed.

It sounds to me like your soliticor should be charging you anyway - it's not the pen-to-paper element that costs but their professional opinion on what to put in any given circumstances. Asking them to check your form is to all intents and purposes getting them to do this work anyway.

Mathew

michael1234

Hi


Just found this very informative thread (if a little specific!). When answering question 38 can you put literally "care of the vendors solicitor" or would you put the post code of the vendor's solicitor followed by the words "care of" followed by the actual vendor address ?

G_M

Yes, a decent solicitor would include this as part of their basic fee - it's part of conveyancing so should not be charged extra/seperately.

However, since they ARE charging extra, do it yourself! If you have questions not answered here, contact HMRC and or the Land Registry. Both are helpful!

timmyt

yzyz wrote: »

Hi All,

We are buying a house and we are close to contract exchange now. Our solicitor would charge us £42+VAT for completing the SDLT1 form so we are considering doing it by ourselves. You can't for two reasons (1) you signed up to their Terms of Business for them to do it and (2) your Lender puts them in charge of its payment and therefore all forms around it Another reason is we don't know how careful the solicitor they won't be a solicitor may be, as on SDLT6 it says 'It is always the responsibility of the purchaser to make sure that the information given in the return is complete and correct'. YOu have to sign it so you will read it

Anyway we are confident in almost all the answers we will be giving in the form (mainly because our case is very simple). However we still would like to ask for some advice on the following issues:

Question 9: we are first-time buyers and the purchase price will be lower than £250,000, so the answer should be 'Yes'?
Question 14: shall we put 0 here?
Question 15: shall we put 0 here? or leave it empty?

Question 10 (and other questions about amount of money): shall we include commas? E.g., shall we use 100,000 or 100000?

Question 38: this is the most confusinig one, so we did some search on the web, but this only made us more confused. On http:// www. ros. gov. uk/ pdfs/ sdlt/ newsletter.pdf it says "If you can’t get the vendor’s address then the address of the property being sold by the vendor can be entered", but on http:// www. hmrc. gov. uk/ so/ newsletter16-5.htm it says "Please remember that we do not want the property address shown as the vendor’s address, unless the vendor is going to remain there" and "‘care of the vendor’s solicitor’ is preferable to entering the property address". So, what are we supposed to put in here? (Sorry I had to insert some spaces in the urls above as urls are not allowed in the message).

Thanks very much for any advices!

good luck OP

hotpot1000

Land reg are very helpful, they will talk you thru it, Ive done my own paperwork twice as Ive not had to use a solicitor.