Lender Administration Fee

Smick100

I am in the process of moving house and I see that the solicitor is charging a "lender administration fee" of £95.+VAT

Before I phone to clarify what this is and ask for justification, is anybody aware of what it is and is it a normal addition to solicitor's work?

I can understand the mortgage lender charging me for their administration but not a solicitor.

kingstreet

Some solicitors quote their fees as eg £450 + VAT, with any disbursements being on top. This is the "all-inclusive" approach.

Others split the fees according to work done for you and work done for your mortgage lender which you pay for too. Their fee might be £350 + VAT plus £90 + VAT for the lender element. They may also list letters, phone calls etc. separately.

Before deciding on a solicitor, you should ensure you are comparing like with like.

The APR for a mortgage includes the assumed cost of the lender's legal work done by your solicitor and should be shown on your mortgage KFI.

gingertips

sounds like "service fee"...

Might be worth asking the solicitor exactly what he is going to do for the £95...Im guessing its 1 letter & a phone call?!

Richard_Webster

The actual charge is not unreasonable as long as they are completely upfront about it - there is more work in dealing with a purchase with a mortgage than with a cash purchase and solicitors have a responsibility to both the buyer and the lender.

Usually they will send you their terms and Conditions and ask you to sign to say you have read them. The admin fee will probably be somewhere in there.

If they dressed it up in a load of gobbledegook so you didn't realise what was involved then complain and threaten to take it further if they don't back down. Solicitors really should stop confusing people with all these extra payments.

Mind you, the worst ones are those that charge the fee set out in Section 8 of the Mortgage Offer (which is usually nothing to do with what your solicitor charges but there to assist in the APR calculation). This figure is typically £100-£200, but some lenders such RBS/Nat West have much higher figures - I had one with £770! The solicitors carefully word their small print to explain all this but frankly when you are getting a conveyancing quote and usually before you have had your mortgage offer the significance of section 8 of the offer would be lost on you!

Smick100

They seem very reasonable and friendly to me but I just wanted to check this out.

I have come to them via LMS. The fee is £195 + VAT and there are a few other things on top of that. Most of them are fairly self explanatory except for the lender administration fee. I tried to google it but can't find much mention of it anywhere else.

I was just a little concerned that they would put down their fee due to LMS and then try to make it back with other fees that they would not charge other customers.

The other fees are:

Lender administration fee: £95 + VAT
File storage/scanning fee: £20 + VAT
Telegraphic transfer fee: £5 + VAT

Land transaction return fee: £75 + VAT

All in all we are looking at about £1,100 in total.