Costs of the practicalities of moving

pph

Hi, FTB alert, please be gentle.

I am trying to budget for moving. My research tells me that at some point I need to cough up for:

1 mortgage fees (quite transparent and easy to find)
2 solicitor fees
3 Surveyor fees
4 Stamp duty
5 Moving and furniture, repairs etc
6 Ground rent
7 Lease renewal fees

Items 1 and 5 I am fine with.

Item 2: I know it's a "how long is a piece of string" question, but on average if things go smoothly (we aren't in a chain, they will apparently rent if can sell quick) how much shall I budget?

Item 3: Do I have to pay for a surveyor? Can I get a (fully qualified and above board!) friend to do this for me?

Item 4: When is this paid? At point of sale or..?

Item 6: £50 per year, woohoo!

Item 7: £118 year lease

So yeah, items 2,3 and 4 are where I need the help please. Thanks!

Evilm

Item 2: You can find online conveyancers who will do the job for £399+VAT. Or you can find ones who want 0.5% to 1.0% of the property value. Also included in that will be search fees (depends on your area but £200+), Land Registry fees (depends on value of property etc.)

Item 3: Your mortgage company will do a basic survey. If you go through a broker they will probably arrange this and you can pay a fee to upgrade the survey from the basic one to a homebuyer one or a full survey. The basic will give pretty much just a value and "yeah, it isn't going to fall down". The homebuyer will do a relatively indepth one but won't look beneath the surface so won't catch everything. If you pay for the full survey they should do a bit more and check everything out in full. You can appoint your own non-mortgage company linked one if you want too. Its advisable to do more than just the basic one as that may not show you stuff that you need to know. As for what each of these cost its another piece of string issue.

Item 4: The conveyancer will include this in the completion statement (and need this in their client account in order to complete) and they will send it off and pay the fee to the government just after completion. The same with the Land Registry fees (which will be paid over once the stamp duty has been done and returned to the solicitor - can take from 1 month or so usually).

For mortgage fees do include the fact that your first mortgage payment could be up to 160% or more of your normal payment. It will depend on what time of the month you complete versus your payment dates and will be to do with the interest incurred in the first month.

pph

Wow what a great answer!

Item 1 is great news, I was thinking at best it would be £2k to get those guys to pick the phone up!

Item 3: my old man is a maintenance manager for the NHS and looks after estates and facilities. I also have a mate who's a surveyor so I'll pull him in :]

Item 4: great, thanks! That would have been a nasty shock if not anticipated

Last fact: again, great, thanks for that, good to bear in mind

pph

So is the above list of considerations complete for a "normal" transaction?

I am making my first offer today <eek!> :T

alexia88

2. With regards to our solicitors fee, it shocked me. We paid £500 up front to begin the searches and then were invoiced for £1200 after exchange, which had to be paid before completion. We didn't budget for this much, but had to pay it. To be honest the service provided was impeccable and sped everything up so worth it.

3. I got a first time buyer mortgage from a high street lender, this offered cash back. We used the cash back to pay for the surveyor fees, so only ended up paying £7 for the surveyor.

We didn't have to pay stamp duty as our house was less than the threshold so I can't answer that I'm afraid .

pph

Thanks for the advice on the solicitors fees, appreciated.

With HSBC, they have 3 levels of survey. You have to get the basic one to get the mortgage. Then, if you want a higher one, they charge you the difference between the costs. So...

Basic (min requirement to get the mortgage) - £227
Mid - £461 but you get the basic paid for so it's £234
Top - £647 but you get the basic paid for so it's £420

And there's a stamp duty calculator on this site - made me want to cry tbh.

Am worried I am missing something in the above list! Do I still need to pay land registry fees if buying a flat / it's a lease?

Anything else anyone can think of?

Thanks!

Evilm

pph wrote: »

Am worried I am missing something in the above list! Do I still need to pay land registry fees if buying a flat / it's a lease?

Thanks!

Yes.

alexia88 - was that including disbursements? (Searches, office copies etc) The upfront funds were probably for the local searches and other searches.

The bill you got should have been itemised as to what was fees, what was disbursements and what was VAT.

The shock that you got does outline one thing: Do ask your solicitors if their quote is on a fixed fee basis or if its an approximate but will be billed hourly.

Since OP is buying leasehold its likely that the costs will be higher as there can be a separate fee for the extra bits of work involved.

Not related to the conveyancing but to the house move I can think of 4 other costs OP needs to consider:

1) Property insurance - depending on whether the freeholder/management company has building insurance or not you will need insurance from Exchange (normally a week before completion). Even if you don't need building insurance you'll want to sort out the contents insurance.

2) The Deposit - Any monies not coming from the mortgage company regarding the deposit on the house and all the fees will need to be with the solicitors about 3 days before completion as cleared funds. (If you are sending a cheque they may insist on it 10 days before to allow clearing).

3) the moving costs: Are you hiring a removals company or using a man & van/van hire? For us, certified packrats, we moved enough for a house of 4 and it cost £1800 to use proper removals! It will be much cheaper for others who have much less stuff to move!

4) Consider the rent/house ownership overlap. We had a horrible situation where our buyer nearly pulled out when his landlords wanted a months notice to let him out of his rent contract! Its worth remembering that you might end up with (and even want) a few weeks overlap between getting the house and clearing our your rented place. Its usual (or used to be) to have about a week in between exchange and completion so you shouldn't hand in your notice until then which will probably leave at least three weeks overlap. This can be useful for allowing you to move in in a more organised manner but also can be a bit of an expense!

I can't think of any more potential costs right now.

alexia88

Hi Evilm, just in response to your comments, the upfront fees were for the searches and the invoice did itemise (I'm pretty sure there was like a £40 charge for photocopying on there!) and we were billed for hourly work. Unfortunately, like most of the whole process it was arranged by my partner and to be honest it's not what I would have done (I would have preferred to pay a flat fee), but I can't fault the work that he did do. Mine was also a leasehold, so that may have bumped up the costs.

This is a really good thread, I think it will help a lot of people out with budgeting for those few weeks/months between offer acceptance and completion.

pph

Evilm wrote: »

Yes.

[etc...]

I can't think of any more potential costs right now.

What a post! :T

Morgage_Confused

you mention stamp duty in your previous post. as a FTB you are exempt up to £250,000 property value.

enjoy that as you'll only get it once.

pph

Noted, thanks!