Can you haggle with solicitor for conveyancing?

ethank

Experience on my current sale is always use a local solicitor! I have spent about 60 quid on Special Delivery sending them documents they had forgotten!

If I could have the choice again about paying a little more and getting someone local, I would definitely do it.

hieveryone

kingstreet wrote: »

£1,850 for legal costs for a purchase alone? Nothing to sell?

That's a lot for a £215,000 purchase. I'd expect about £650 + VAT + disbursements or around £1,200 to £1,300 in total.

For the difference, you could get a chauffeur driven limo to one of the firms we use in the Midlands and still have some change left over...

Sorry, should have mentioned that we do have a place to sell too.

kingstreet

Given that disbursements and stamp duty are the same wherever you decide to go, please let us have a simple "fee + VAT" figure for the sale and purchase, so we can tell you how it compares.

hieveryone

kingstreet wrote: »

Given that disbursements and stamp duty are the same wherever you decide to go, please let us have a simple "fee + VAT" figure for the sale and purchase, so we can tell you how it compares.

I have possibly went about this the wrong way then. The costs I have been given are an 'overall' cost i.e the total amount I would be due the solicitors.

Should I find out every fee due when asking for quotes?

Thanks for your help - as you can tell I am VERY new to this!

JimmyTheWig

ethank wrote: »

Experience on my current sale is always use a local solicitor! I have spent about 60 quid on Special Delivery sending them documents they had forgotten!

If I could have the choice again about paying a little more and getting someone local, I would definitely do it.

I'd say best to get a solicitor local to where you are buying. You may as well use their local knowledge of the area. They will have helped people buy and sell various properties locally and will know what are issues and what can be ignored.
Obviously if you're not moving far then that fits with that ethank says. But if you're moving a distance away, like we are, we just emailed scans of all our documents to the solicitor and sent everything registered post in one batch when ready.

ethank

Unfortunately solicitors don't make it easy to compare with each other! Some prices are just the fee, some include VAT, Some don't. Some include disbursements.... Nightmare!

kingstreet

If we work on the basis that disbursements and stamp duty are fixed, only the fee and the VAT will be different.

Simply ask the firms to provide you a full quotation and make sure things like;-

- completing stamp duty return
- acting for mortgage lender

are part of the headline fee and not added later to make them look like they aren't fees.

So, if you have solicitor one which says;-

£500 + VAT + disbursements

and you can see there is no additional charge for the above two items, this would be better than solicitor two's;-

£500 + VAT + disbursements + £75 SDLT fee + £100 acting for lender.

You need to be able to compare effectively, but in general the fee + VAT number is likely to be the most useful figure you can get.

JimmyTheWig

kingstreet wrote: »

So, if you have solicitor one which says;-

£500 + VAT + disbursements

and you can see there is no additional charge for the above two items, this would be better than solicitor two's;-

£500 + VAT + disbursements + £75 SDLT fee + £100 acting for lender.

So are you saying that the SDLT fee and the charge for acting for the lender aren't disbursements?
Likewise I'm sure I've seen some quote for photocopying and the like.
Are you saying that the disbursements will be a fixed figure when buying house X for £y regardless of the solicitor?

Kynthia

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

So are you saying that the SDLT fee and the charge for acting for the lender aren't disbursements?

I believe disbursements are fees charged by a third party which is why the solicitor usually asks for these monies up front. Their fee for acting for you and the mortgage company and fees for filling in forms/completing actions for you are set by themselves and are what you need to compare.