Advice on moving costs

Maureen43

Hello,

I haven't done a house move for many years so am completely out of touch with costs. Can anyone help with the following?

1) What kind of percentage should we be negotiating with estate agents?
2) How much roughly should we allow for removals? (From a modest four bed to a three bed home)
3) Should use use online conveyancers? How much roughly should we allow for conveyancing charges?

Thanks All.;)

andy.m_2

1.5%
£1000 including packing if not too far away
no, use a local firm, you will be grateful later down the line. To buy and sell maybe allow £1500 plus SDLT

arbrighton

1) it depends on competition between agents in an area. For our house (which is completing, finally, this week), there are 6 or 7 agents in the area, several of which are independent. We got valuations from 2- the 3rd couldn't be bothered to ring us back, but have chased us for our custom repeatedly since then and went with the agent with a more sensible valuation (valuing ridiculously highly and being very stereotypical with their profile of expected buyers wasn't impressive). The agents we used offered 1.25% without using their sols or 1.15% with their sols. As we hadn't used a sol since we moved into the house, we went with the discount, especially as the agents had been recommended by a friend.
And the agents have been great, realistic about when/ if we should drop price, going above and beyond in terms of trying to get our first buyer back on track when he pulled out, and generally working incredibly hard to finally get us to this point after 8 months.
2) We moved 160 miles from 3 bed to 3 bed (into rented on the following day) and because I'm completely rubbish at packing things, paid for packing service. This was totally worth it from my point of view, as they turned up and just got on with it, on the day and it was miles quicker and more efficient than I could ever have been.
We again got 3 quotes from local firms, in the range of £1500 to £2000. We actually went with most expensive as they seemed most bothered about making sure we understood terms, how they would pack things etc, and I have recommended that company to other people.
3) If you read other threads on here, most people seem to say not- it will be cheap, but unlikely to be local to you and much of the work won't be carried out by qualified solicitors. Often you don't get to talk to the same person if you phone them and if something less standard turns up, they may not be able to deal with it very well.
Our selling conveyancing was about £700 but it's about £1k for the buying as they seemed to have a sliding scale based on property price. That doesn't include searches,disbursements etc. However, we wanted to pick a local firm, where we can drop things into the office, rather than trusting important documents such as passports to the post, and it's a company my family have used recently.