Conveyancing solicitors - am I being ripped off?

Burridge60

Lets hope he chose a volume conveyancer recommended by the EA then !

bluu2k

bluu2k wrote: »

Hi,

Some comments with personal experience from me in blue colour below. Hope this helps

Cheers,

I just checked my old records and here's what we paid for/reimbursed to our conveyancing firm in 2009 for our purchase (freehold house)

Legal Fee plus VAT £316.25
HMLC search £4.00
HMLR search £8.00
Stamp Duty £xxxx.00 (sorry, don't want to show as this might not apply to the OP case)
Land Registry Fee £280.00
SDLT Fee £0.00
ID verification £0.00 (some £20 if you asked them to make electronic verification. We sent them our hard copy documents. Hence free)
TT Fee £34.50
Postage £2.00
Mortgage fee £30.00

So if excluding the stamp duty, we paid/reimbursed them £674.75 in total for their service. NOTHING ELSE.

timmyt

bluu2k wrote: »

I just checked my old records and here's what we paid for/reimbursed to our conveyancing firm in 2009 for our purchase (freehold house)

Legal Fee plus VAT £316.25
HMLC search £4.00
HMLR search £8.00
Stamp Duty £xxxx.00 (sorry, don't want to show as this might not apply to the OP case)
Land Registry Fee £280.00
SDLT Fee £0.00
ID verification £0.00 (some £20 if you asked them to make electronic verification. We sent them our hard copy documents. Hence free)
TT Fee £34.50
Postage £2.00
Mortgage fee £30.00

So if excluding the stamp duty, we paid/reimbursed them £674.75 in total for their service. NOTHING ELSE.

scary..........i do hope you don't encounter sale issues if wrong doings are uncovered.....£250 plus VAT for 12 week of work...can't get your car serviced in 1.5 hours for that......:eek:

zappahey

timmyt wrote: »

....£250 plus VAT for 12 week of work...can't get your car serviced in 1.5 hours for that......:eek:

But, of course, it might be 12 weeks in duration but it's nowhere near 12 weeks of work.

Oh, BTW, you might want to try a different car mechanic, even my SAAB dealer doesn't charge £160 per hour.

timmyt

zappahey wrote: »

But, of course, it might be 12 weeks in duration but it's nowhere near 12 weeks of work.

Oh, BTW, you might want to try a different car mechanic, even my SAAB dealer doesn't charge £160 per hour.

if i were you i'd take your deeds into a solicitor and get them to check your cheap conveyancer didn't screw up...or you can chance it and wait until you sell

tim123456789

timmyt wrote: »

you have to threaten them...try this letter:

Dear Sirs
I acknowldege receipt of your financial statement, which horrifies me. I have taken a second legal opinion, and I am informed that the following charges represent your Firm's pure profit, and are neither disbursements nor third party exepnses:

Admin Fee £40.00
Acting for Lender £165.68
SDLT Return £85.00
Bankruptcy searches (x2 @ £24.50) £49.00
Checking Buildings Insurance £35.00
Leasehold Transaction Fee £174.00
Arrange execution of Stock Transfer F £25.00
Obtaining /Preparing deed of covenant £100.00
Retention £75.00
Send deeds post completion £15.00

Whether or not you claim I have agreed to them via your Firm's Terms of Business, they were not properly explained to me and I consider them unfair contract terms.

Unless they are removed from my statement I shall have no alternative but to report this to the solicitor complaints service, the local Press, and the Law Society Gazette, all of who I am sure will take a great interest in how you seek to hide what is your Firm's pure profit and all hiden behind the guise of a cheap headline charge. Yet for all the charge, you still only supply junior conveyacers at more than usual solicitor rates.

I await to hear from you with interest.

Yours faithfully

The retention is a "disbursment" against the block's management accounts showing that the buyer owes the seller some money. The OP will get this back once the accounts are finalised, if they show that this isn't the case.tim

zappahey

timmyt wrote: »

if i were you i'd take your deeds into a solicitor and get them to check your cheap conveyancer didn't screw up...or you can chance it and wait until you sell

I hope you don't make similar false assumptions in your professional activities. There's at least two in that suggestion.

You should try to be a little bit less obsessive on the whole topic

timmyt

zappahey wrote: »

I hope you don't make similar false assumptions in your professional activities. There's at least two in that suggestion.

You should try to be a little bit less obsessive on the whole topic

i am not joking, seriously, do it tomorrow

Richard_Webster

I think if you are half the person I assume you to be you would accept that my ballpark figures gave nothing to allow an individual to be misled as to the "true" cost of their legal encounter with the profession.

This is a leasehold purchase with a share owned by the buyer of a limited company freeholder and management company. Would I be wrong in assuming that the legal requirements would be somewhat more for such a purchase than a freehold open hand transaction. Correct me if i am wrong.

The fees would be more for a share of freehold transaction (which does involve leasehold). We don't know exactly what the original estimate said but TimmyT made the reasonable assumption that they put in a headline fee of £220.50 and the rest of the points were buried in small print of terms and conditions that OP didn't understand. We do not know that for certain, but it does annoy the rest of us who try to be as open as we can about what we are going to charge that some firms do this.

Payments to third parties would not have been foreseeable, so for instance if the residents management company charged £100 for providing a specimen deed of covenant there would not be much the solicitor could do about it.

zappahey

timmyt wrote: »

i am not joking, seriously, do it tomorrow

OK, I'll explain it to you.

I have only ever used a solicitor for all of my house moves, as I strongly believe that you get what you pay for and I do try to avoid using anything involving "contact centres" for significant life events. I want the person on the end of the phone to know who I am.

You, however, do not help your case by coming across as an obsessive on the subject, to the extent of getting quite ranty, and by exaggerating the numbers. It does you no favours as, when you're not on the rant, you do provide really useful information.

And, for your further information, there was a screw up in our last purchase that was only picked up when we came to sell. The solicitor* had missed a fairly fundamental error in the lease for the garage and it was picked up by our buyer's solictor at sale time.

Fortunately, we had used the same firm as we had when buying and they put their hands up, resolving the error at no extra cost.

*Yes, a real one.