Solicitors fees

lucyeve

Hello,

I posted the other day about buying a repossessed house and the slow solicitors, we're now about to exchange and they've given us their bill, however we were originally quoted £570 including some searches, their fee, the land registry fee and their fund transfer charge. When we got the forms to fill in we were offered several different searches at an extra cost, we chose to have the mining search done, there was also the option of an official local authority search at a cost of £104, when I contacted the solicitor about the extra searches he told me we'd only need a personal local authority search, so i asked if it was included in the quote we'd already been given (the £570) and he told me it was (this is all through email).

Jump forward to now we receive the bill and instead of the £32.40 extra for the mining search we were expecting there's an extra £207, now £90 has been explained as a fee from the seller's solicitor and £32.40 as the mining search however they've also charged us for the personal local authority search, we have asked about it but we just seem to be going round in circles with them telling us 'yes that's what you're paying for and that's what we told you in the bill we've just sent' should we be arguing this or should we just suck it up an put it down to experience?

Richard_Webster

You need to be clear as to whether the personal local authority search was included in the original figures - was it or wasn't it?

If it was then why is it now an extra? You can quite reasonably complain if it was.

The seller's solicitor's fee is something that they couldn't have known about when they gave you their original "quote" and would have had no control over - probably a fee that a mortgage lender's solicitor puts in the contract for the sale of property and which you are stuck with if you buy a repo from that lender.

lucyeve

Thankyou for your help

It has searches mentioned in the quote but it doesn't give a breakdown, it just says property searches, I had emailed to ask before we got started if the personal local authority search was included in the original quote and I was told it was.

Richard_Webster

The £570 included "property searches" - right? They didn't say it was £570 plus the cost of property searches?

They are now charging you £777 (£207 more) of which £32.40 is mining search and £90 is seller's solicitor's fee. That leaves £84.60 unaccounted for. Is that for the personal local search?

If they e-mailed to confirm that the £570 included the cost of a personal local search then e-mail them back referring to that e-mail and asking them to reduce the amount they want from you accordingly.

sonastin

Present to them the paper trail which shows both "searches" as being included in the in £570 and confirmation that the personal search is one of the mentioned searches. While it is there in black-and-white in front of them, ask them why there is an additional fee for a search that was already included.

In the meantime, make sure that you pay the bits of their bill that you aren't disputing. That shows good faith on your part and reduces the sum of money that you're arguing about to the bit that you really feel isn't owed. It might be enough to make them drop the extra charge entirely but it should certainly be enough to make sure that they continue with the purchase as planned without holding things up for fear that you won't pay them.