SDLT Form Fee

Legacy_user

Hi all,

We are looking at the list of chargers provided by our solicitor and have come across a SDLT form fee of £30.00 + VAT. We are first time buyers and are exempt from the stamp duty payment but should we still be paying for the form to be filled in? I noticed this as i compared a few quotes and others did not list this in their charges. Any advice would be great

Matt

MexPirate

some solicitors charge - seen anything up to £75, mine does it as part of the main fee (£349) with no extra charge.

tomatopuree

The SDLT form will need to be completed (even though you are exempt). The solicitors will need the confirmation they get from submitting the form in order to register your purchase at Land Registry.

It's a bit of a cheeky fee as it doesn't take more than 10 mins to fill the form in, but conveyancing fees are so dirt cheap that they need to get a little extra money for things like filling in the SDLT form.

System

When you say dirt cheap how much are we talking about here? I had to fork out £871 in total and i would assume that this isn't very cheap? Also

tomatopuree

bwfcmadlad wrote: »

When you say dirt cheap how much are we talking about here? I had to fork out £871 in total and i would assume that this isn't very cheap? Also

Was that including disbursements (land registry fees, local search, enviro search etc)? Given that my rate as a newly qualified solicitor at a regional firm is £170 per hour plus VAT and a lot of firms offer conveyancing for £350 to £450 plus VAT (before disbursements) then it assumes that I am spending 2 hours on the conveyancing. There is just no way (unless you are acting on a very very simple sale or purchase) that you could do a decent job in 2 hours. If your £871 doesn't include disbursements then I would say that is probably a fair price for decent conveyancing. The worst thing is that firms are forced to offer conveyancing for £350 plus VAT whilst the estate agents walks away with £2000.