Buying a garage - solicitor wants 10% in fees!!!!

samtheman1k

Hi all, I'm just after some advice on saving some money whilst trying to buy a garage! The garage is en bloc and thus only about £10k and we already own one of the garages in the block. However, the conveyencer wants nearly £1k in fees and searches!!! That's 10% of the purchase price!!!

Any hints on where I can save money? We are paying cash (no mortgage), already have a garage in the block, so guess we can skip things like the flood search etc? It also actually borders our house, so don't know if that can help?

Any ideas????

Evilm

When did you purchase the other garage? If it was recently (say a year or two) then look at the papers your solicitors sent you then. Ours sent us copies of all the searches so you could perhaps provide those to the conveyancer?

You may have to sign something saying you agree they aren't liable if the new searches would have brought up something that the old ones didn't show. Its also possible they won't allow you to use older searches.

googler

Replacing the gearbox on a car worth £5000 takes (say) 5 hours, and the garage bills at £50 per hour, yielding £250, 5% of the value.

Replacing the gearbox on a similar BMW worth £2500 takes the same time, and the garage will charge you the same labour rate, but the £250 is now 10% of the value.

There's a minimum that has to apply for the conveyancer to make a profit, unless you can provide a good reason why your transaction should be treated as a 'loss leader' ....?

Alternatively;

How much would you be willing to pay?

samtheman1k

The other garage was bought as part of the house, thus was included on the deeds. I hadn't thought of giving them the original searches, or I guess they would have copies as the quote was from the same solicitor?

I'm not sure what this has to do with BMWs, but the whole reason I asked the question was because I don't know if there is a difference in the amount of work for a £1.5m property or a £1k property (e.g. solicitor insurance etc), hence I asked a question... I guess I can skip the planning searches, flood search, enviromental search. Would I still need to do the SDLT form, as there is no stamp duty payable, as that would save £50? Plus of course, they wouldn't have to deal with the mortgage company, so does that mean they have less work to do?

Richard_Webster

I think you have to give us a breakdown so we can suggest what is or isn't necessary.

Evilm

samtheman1k wrote: »

The other garage was bought as part of the house, thus was included on the deeds. I hadn't thought of giving them the original searches, or I guess they would have copies as the quote was from the same solicitor?

I'm not sure what this has to do with BMWs, but the whole reason I asked the question was because I don't know if there is a difference in the amount of work for a £1.5m property or a £1k property (e.g. solicitor insurance etc), hence I asked a question... I guess I can skip the planning searches, flood search, enviromental search. Would I still need to do the SDLT form, as there is no stamp duty payable, as that would save £50? Plus of course, they wouldn't have to deal with the mortgage company, so does that mean they have less work to do?

They may have copies, its worth asking them if they would use though.

There isn't a huge difference in the amount of work they have to do for a house or a garage unfortunately.

SDLT shouldn't have to be filed due to the value. And they shouldn't have to deal with the mortgage company.

SmlSave

SDLT shouldn't have to be filed due to the value

I'm pretty sure the SDLT form still needs to be filled out even if there's none to be paid. But any decent solicitor shouldn't charge extra for this.

googler

samtheman1k wrote: »

I'm not sure what this has to do with BMWs, but the whole reason I asked the question was because I don't know if there is a difference in the amount of work for a £1.5m property or a £1k property (e.g. solicitor insurance etc), hence I asked a question...

Exactly the point I'm making - the work remains the same but becomes a larger percentage of the perceived or actual price of the item they're doing the work for. Eventually the price of the item descends to a point where they're at the minimum fee to make a profit or break even.

lee636

googler wrote: »

Replacing the gearbox on a car worth £5000 takes (say) 5 hours, and the garage bills at £50 per hour, yielding £250, 5% of the value.

Replacing the gearbox on a similar BMW worth £2500 takes the same time, and the garage will charge you the same labour rate, but the £250 is now 10% of the value.

There's a minimum that has to apply for the conveyancer to make a profit, unless you can provide a good reason why your transaction should be treated as a 'loss leader' ....?

Alternatively;

How much would you be willing to pay?

:T Nice example.

Gwhiz

lee636 wrote: »

:T Nice example.

No it's not. BMW charge far more than £50 per hour

G_M

Gwhiz wrote: »

No it's not. BMW charge far more than £50 per hour

But an independant garage doesn't. And as it's an aging BMW (worth £2500) you're likely to use an independant.