TT fee for staircasing

stranger12

Hello,

Sorry if this has been asked before and I did google to find out what TT or telegraphic transfer is used for but couldn't get a satisfactory answer.

I have completed a staircasing ( buying more share in a shared ownership property) and have been invoiced £35 for TT fee.

when I asked for a qoute to complete the staircasing this was not raised to me so don't understand why they would mention this when about to send the payment over.

what is the TT used for and can it be avoided by paying by cheque etc ?


why do they charge TT at all? isn't that it is free to transfer money whithin bakns like I can transfer and send any amount ( making sure I have that amount) to any other banks free of charge

00ec25

TT fee is the charge for the method by which your money is passed between their bank and your vendors (ie their solicitors) bank. It is quaintly still called TT by dinosaurs, more modern parlance is CHAPS fee - Clearing Houses Automated Payment System

there is no avoiding it as no one would accept a cheque (think about it, would you accept one in that case?)

turning up with a suitcase full of cash will cause all sorts of alarm bells over money laundering and would most likely be refused on the spot if for no other reason that the problems "they" would have in banking it themselves

when people are handling high value transactions they will not accept a cheque as it could bounce and it takes days (in reality weeks) before a bank will confirm that the cheque has cleared

CHAPS is instant transfer of money and the bank guarantees that the money has cleared the moment it arrives. If you are familiar with internet banking it is equivalent to faster payments. The money can be withdrawn the moment it arrives in your account. The difference with faster payments is that has an upper limit which is far too low for the sums involved in housing, hence CHAPS transfers continue to be used

actually you cannot transfer any amount of money you like yourself, in practice you will find the upper limit is normally 10K. There are also different terms and conditions applied to business accounts compared to your personal account, banks charge business for banking. At the moment (most) banks have chosen not to charge personal accounts

i appreciate that as you are staircasing you will resent the extra cost and would have a point that it is not the same as buying a new house since its not as though the money has to be passed down a chain of buyers and sellers but the fact remains CHAPS ("TT") is how money moves in housing transactions

Richard_Webster

Just to explain further in case OP asks - post before this explained virtually everything.

Solicitors usually have their own access to their Bank's CHAPs system. The bank will make a charge for the facility and a charge for each transfer and the solicitors themeselves will have the admin time in data entry and dealing with security issues. Banks typically charge £20-£25 if they do it themselves so £35 for a solicitor is quite a reasonable fee. Solicitors have the in house facility so they can control when the money goes otherwise they would be waiting for the bank to do it sometime that day - which for most completions simply isn't good enough.

stranger12

thanks for the replies. my understanding is

business accounts are charged per transaction thus evertime the solicitors receive money they pay £25 and when they send payment another £25 roughly.

that means they are charged for every transaction.

As you mentioned this charge is for chaps or fast transfer so what happens If i pay using cheque ? are they charging to receive the money from me or to send it once they have received it

sorry if this looks like a silly question but I still do not understand this fully

in addition, I did transfer 25k from my account to my solicitor when buying the house . it was stopped but after security check released thus you should be able to make any payment of any amount as long as you have the funds.

Yorkie1

stranger12 wrote: »

thanks for the replies. my understanding is

business accounts are charged per transaction thus evertime the solicitors receive money they pay £25 and when they send payment another £25 roughly.

that means they are charged for every transaction.

As you mentioned this charge is for chaps or fast transfer so what happens If i pay using cheque ? are they charging to receive the money from me or to send it once they have received it

sorry if this looks like a silly question but I still do not understand this fully

in addition, I did transfer 25k from my account to my solicitor when buying the house . it was stopped but after security check released thus you should be able to make any payment of any amount as long as you have the funds.

No, the solicitors do not charge for receiving funds from you, irrespective of how you pay them. The charges relate to when they send your money from their client account to someone else e.g. the seller's solicitors.

Reliance on the faster payments system is risky. I have seen posts on here from people whose transfers through that route were not released after a quick check - they were held up for several days, impacting on their ability to complete.

Far better to pay either by cheque a week in advance (don't forget it takes some days for funds to clear, and the solicitors need the funds to be cleared the day before exchange or completion), or ask your own bank to transfer the funds by CHAPS to your solicitors (you pay your bank a fee for this, but not the solicitor).