The cost of selling

Peco141

A home report finalised valued the property at £62,000 in Scotland.

Selling fees:

Home Report - £300 + VAT = £360
Estate Agent - £195 registration, £600 + VAT after sale = £915
Solicitor - £500 + VAT = £ 600 for sale + £120 Property & Coal Reports & Form 12 & 13 searches + Due on Discharge £60 = £780

Total price to sell a 1 bedroom property £2055!!

Oh my god, is it just me or is that not ridiculous!??? Ok we could have advertised ourselves and saved a bit of money but still..

God knows what the solicitor fees will be to purchase a property.

myhouse_2

That's why renting is often a much better option for people than buying unless you're living in the same place for many years.
I'm looking to buy a place over 300,000 meaning my tax alone will be around 10k!

googler

Peco141 wrote: »

Oh my god, is it just me or is that not ridiculous!??? Ok we could have advertised ourselves and saved a bit of money but still..

God knows what the solicitor fees will be to purchase a property.

If you advertised it yourselves, you'd still need the Home Report and the Solicitor, so £1100 at least going down that road. You just have to take the judgement call on whether or not your advertising would pull in as many potential buyers as the EA's advertising and other marketing....

Sol's fees on a purchase are likely to be the same £500+VAT plus a slightly different set of 'disbursements' - but at least you shouldn't need a survey, because the seller of that property will have paid for the Home Report.....

googler

You may think it's 'ridiculous', but when you break it down, all the VAT goes to the Govt - so there's no scope for saving there; and that represents some £320 or so of your bill.

Out of the surveyor's £300, they have to cover the cost of your HR at the very least, plus overheads for staff, premises, business insurance, professional liability insurance, online infrastructure, etc.

Likewise the solicitor has to cover the cost of your case out of the that £500, with similar overheads for staff, premises, etc.

Lastly the EA, again, has to cover similar costs to the above, with a bundle of other overheads unrelated to your sale.

How much scope do you think there is for any of them to give you a discount? How much do you think is a reasonable charge for any of the above services?

Peco141

Some good questions and I'm not really sure what I would class as reasonable. I just didn't anticipate we'd lose £2000 when we first decided to sell.

googler

Why do class it as 'losing' £2000 as opposed to paying three different professions a reasonable sum for their services?

Peco141

I guess it's due to the lack of funds I have lying around. Paying fees like the aforementioned, albeit at the going rate it would seem, came as a bit of a shock.

Having learned just how much things are going to cost we're going to have to re-evaluate matters when it comes to purchasing as that is a proportion of our originally planned deposit gone already.

googler

How much did you buy the property for, and how long ago?

phil_b_2

Selling fee's of £2k on a £62k property will of course look hefty. If it was a £300k property, not so much. I think you can sell a house for anot a lot of money if you're willing to put in a lot of the ffort yourself.

Peco141

googler wrote: »

How much did you buy the property for, and how long ago?

6 years. 48k.

googler

Peco141 wrote: »

6 years. 48k.

So, assuming you sell at £62k, with £2k fees, you make £12k or so profit on what you paid, which goes toward the onward purchase.