Large Conveyancing Bill

ELLE123_2

Hi I am in the process of buying a flat (£100k) and am very near to exchange. I am a FTB so probably quite naive - please be gentle!

When my offer was accepted, the estate agent said she would only take the flat off the market if I there and then gave her my solictior's details, I hadn't yet researched the market and she suggested I used their recommended conveyancer (yes i know i know - alarms bells should have rung straight away) and quoted me £1,000 for the legal fees. I had to pay a deposit immediately over the phone which i did.

A week or so later I received an initial quote from the solicitor for £1,400. I queried this with the estate agent and the solicitor but they confirmed the fee was correct at £1,400 (including searches etc). the estate agent's excuse was that they had quoted me the lower fee for freehold properties. How an estate agent didn't know that the flat was leasehold is beyond me, but that's by the by...

I agreed to carry on and we are now days before exchange, only to receive a final invoice from the solicitor for a whopping £2,400!! Apparently they had to do extra work on the lease and the management company charged them extra fees, but they did not discuss any of this with me before they carried out all the extra work.

Obviously, I still want the flat and I have complained to both the solicitor and the estate agent. The solicitor's response was very much 'that's our fees, so tough' and the estate agent won't even return my calls. Helpful.

SO - my question (if you've made it this far, well done!) is what rights do I have?? Apparently all of the fees I am being charged were in the 'potential additional fees page' of the documents i originally received, but there was all sorts on there and I innocently thought I was purchasing a simple flat, for a relatively low value, none of that miniscule font would apply to me.

Any help you can give me would be much appreciated, I don't want to lose the flat (and even if i did pull out, I'd probably still have to pay the fees) but I feel really annoyed that they can double the initial quote without any warning and expect me to find another £1,000. In the absence of a money tree - I am really stressed out at funding this at such short notice.

Please help if you can, and thank you for your patience in reading my ramble.

G_M

ELLE123 wrote: »

...... she suggested I used their recommended conveyancer (yes i know i know - alarms bells should have rung straight away) and quoted me £1,000 for the legal fees. I had to pay a deposit immediately over the phone which i did.
Yes. Mad

A week or so later I received an initial quote from the solicitor for £1,400. I queried this with the estate agent and the solicitor but they confirmed the fee was correct at £1,400 (including searches etc).
Why at this point did you not shop around?

I agreed to carry on
So far so bad.
and we are now days before exchange, only to receive a final invoice from the solicitor for a whopping £2,400!! Apparently they had to do extra work on the lease and the management company charged them extra fees, but they did not discuss any of this with me before they carried out all the extra work.
Their quote will have been for the elements they knew about (their own fees, searches etc). They can never quote for unknown fees.

Obviously, I still want the flat and I have complained to both the solicitor and the estate agent. The solicitor's response was very much 'that's our fees, so tough' and the estate agent won't even return my calls. Helpful.


SO - my question (if you've made it this far, well done!) is what rights do I have?? Apparently all of the fees I am being charged were in the 'potential additional fees page' of the documents i originally received,
Standard. As I said, they cannot quote for the iunknowm, but they did warn you...
but there was all sorts on there and I innocently thought I was purchasing a simple flat, for a relatively low value, none of that miniscule font would apply to me.
and now you know better

The only thing you can do is go through the final bill item by item and compare each against the quote, and the 'potential additional fees', and see if they have made any errors.

ELLE123_2

Thanks, I can see the mistakes I've made but I was looking more for any advice on challenging the fees or any personal experiences of having succeeded at doing so. Any help in this direction would be appreciated

ELLE123_2

To give an example, the final quote included £300 for 'additional leasehold work' - how am I supposed to know that my lease needs additional work over and above the standard if they don't tell me before carrying out the work?

G_M

ELLE123 wrote: »

Thanks, I can see the mistakes I've made but I was looking more for any advice on challenging the fees or any personal experiences of having succeeded at doing so. Any help in this direction would be appreciated

go through the final bill item by item and compare each against the quote, and the 'potential additional fees', and see if they have made any errors.

£300 for 'additional leasehold work'

Ask them in writing what the work was.

cattie

Can you either give us a break down here on the fees that they are charging you or at least tell us what amount that have invoiced you for for the actual legal charge. For instance, the cost for the actual legal fee on my flat purchase was £375 + vat. Most of the other charges are usually pretty standard & should differ little, which ever solicitor you use. I did get a loyalty discount on the legal fee as I'd used this solicitor before.

Some solicitors do charge an awful lot more for the legal charge when doing conveyancing work than another local office will do.

Usually a solicitor will charge around £150 more for conveyancing work on a leasehold property & whilst there can be extra charges, such as paying a fee to management company for the leasehold pack, this is only usually around £250. Any work or charges incurred on the purchase should be fully detailed, so do query it if not.

Some of the money a buyer will be paying will be for stamp duty, the amount depends on the price paid for the flat. But as you state the purchase price as £100k, I believe there is no stamp duty payable on this amount.

Also, with a flat, sometimes you pay a proportion of any service charge or buildings insurance that the vendor might already have paid in advance. Again this should be detailed if this is the case.

You probably aren't aware that the estate agent would have got a fat fee from the solicitor for referring you & obviously, this has come out of your pocket. So, no wonder the ea are not returning your calls, they have earned their commission from you & see no point in dealing with you any further.

What I would do in your situation is quickly contact a couple of other local solicitors & make an enquiry re charges for buying this flat, let them believe you are a possible client. See if they will email you an estimate & then you can compare what they would charge & see if this is a rip off merchant you have unfortunately landed yourself with.

If the fees you have been charged seem wrong or extraordinarily high, then perhaps we can make suggestions as to what steps you can take to complain about the charges made.

perbinder

ELLE123 wrote: »

Hi I am in the process of buying a flat (£100k) and am very near to exchange. I am a FTB so probably quite naive - please be gentle!

When my offer was accepted, the estate agent said she would only take the flat off the market if I there and then gave her my solictior's details, I hadn't yet researched the market and she suggested I used their recommended conveyancer (yes i know i know - alarms bells should have rung straight away) and quoted me £1,000 for the legal fees. I had to pay a deposit immediately over the phone which i did.

A week or so later I received an initial quote from the solicitor for £1,400. I queried this with the estate agent and the solicitor but they confirmed the fee was correct at £1,400 (including searches etc). the estate agent's excuse was that they had quoted me the lower fee for freehold properties. How an estate agent didn't know that the flat was leasehold is beyond me, but that's by the by...

I agreed to carry on and we are now days before exchange, only to receive a final invoice from the solicitor for a whopping £2,400!! Apparently they had to do extra work on the lease and the management company charged them extra fees, but they did not discuss any of this with me before they carried out all the extra work.

Obviously, I still want the flat and I have complained to both the solicitor and the estate agent. The solicitor's response was very much 'that's our fees, so tough' and the estate agent won't even return my calls. Helpful.

SO - my question (if you've made it this far, well done!) is what rights do I have?? Apparently all of the fees I am being charged were in the 'potential additional fees page' of the documents i originally received, but there was all sorts on there and I innocently thought I was purchasing a simple flat, for a relatively low value, none of that miniscule font would apply to me.

Any help you can give me would be much appreciated, I don't want to lose the flat (and even if i did pull out, I'd probably still have to pay the fees) but I feel really annoyed that they can double the initial quote without any warning and expect me to find another £1,000. In the absence of a money tree - I am really stressed out at funding this at such short notice.

Please help if you can, and thank you for your patience in reading my ramble.

The bill is excessive. You need to complain to the solicitor that you do not agree with the bill. State that you have looked at the law society website and will complain to the legal ombudsman if this is not resolved. You will find certain items suddenly disappearing from your bill.

I have received full refunds from conveyancing solicitors in the past for very poor work and major mistakes. Do not fear your solicitor and complain.

Fluffi

ELLE123 wrote: »

I agreed to carry on and we are now days before exchange, only to receive a final invoice from the solicitor for a whopping £2,400!! Apparently they had to do extra work on the lease and the management company charged them extra fees, but they did not discuss any of this with me before they carried out all the extra work.

Obviously, I still want the flat and I have complained to both the solicitor and the estate agent. The solicitor's response was very much 'that's our fees, so tough' and the estate agent won't even return my calls. Helpful.

SO - my question (if you've made it this far, well done!) is what rights do I have?? Apparently all of the fees I am being charged were in the 'potential additional fees page' of the documents i originally received, but there was all sorts on there and I innocently thought I was purchasing a simple flat, for a relatively low value, none of that miniscule font would apply to me.

Any help you can give me would be much appreciated, I don't want to lose the flat (and even if i did pull out, I'd probably still have to pay the fees) but I feel really annoyed that they can double the initial quote without any warning and expect me to find another £1,000. In the absence of a money tree - I am really stressed out at funding this at such short notice.

Please help if you can, and thank you for your patience in reading my ramble.

You do have my sympathy as its horrible being a FTB as agents and others do take advantage and aren't as transparent about fees and costs as they should be. Estate agents will lie about everything and pretend its all easier

Unfortunately most initial conveyancing quotes exclude VAT, assuming freehold (so less complex) and are exclusive of search fees and any other fees that need to be paid all to seem "cheap".

That page of additional fees would have included a lot of things that will have applied to you I imagine including searches, indemnity insurance, leasehold work, fees for money transfers (for exchange + completion) and all things that if the solicitor didn't perform they wouldn't be possible to complete the sale. In my experience every conveyancer charges for these items separately in additional to the "legal" work and there is no such thing as an "all in one" quote because search fees are set by local authorities/utilities so depend on where you are buying, bank transfer fees depend on your mortgage.

In the letters you signed authorising the solicitor start the work there will likely be a statement to the effect authorising them to work independently and not necessarily consult you on everything that will lead an additional charge but they will act in your best interests at all times. This is because something things have to be done - like buying the leasehold management pack which can cost anything between £25 and £200 - to get the paperwork ready for exchange. Given its an essential cost, so there is little point the solicitor discussing before because if you don't agree then won't be able to purchase.

Yes it would have been polite for the solicitor to let you know of the additional charges during the process but a lot of them don't work like that and will only tell you if you ask. And its fair to say that when already spending £100k on a flat/house, plus mortgage fees, searches fees etc then most purchasers won't pull out of a sale because of an extra £200+VAT.

So given you were told about the additional fees in advance and didn't question them at the time, you probably don't have any grounds to challenge the bill I'm afraid. I know this isn't very helpful to you.

In terms of practical next steps:

• I would ask to see an itemised invoice though and ask for an explanation about anything you don't understand just to ensure you aren't doubled charged for anything but don't expect a bill reduction unless they've made a mistake. Anything that looks too high challenge and get them to break-down further.
• You will have to pay the fees if you pull out so I suggest you find a way to get the money together even if you borrow from family for a bit (rather than taking a loan that will show against your credit score).

Fluffi

cattie wrote: »

Also, with a flat, sometimes you pay a proportion of any service charge or buildings insurance that the vendor might already have paid in advance. Again this should be detailed if this is the case.

Good point, the service charges for the rest of this year could easily be £500+ and will need to be paid back to the vendor on completion if they paid in advance at the start of the year. This would help to explain the massive jump from £1400 to £2400 too.

Get an itemised bill hun.

NonPracticingSol

The Terms that you signed should make it clear who you should complain to (normally the managing partner). Express your concerns and make it clear that you are unhappy. Chances are that all of a sudden hundreds will be removed as they will not want you complaining to the ombudsman or, worse still, their Regulator the SRA. The firm will be well aware that their Regulator clamps down heavily on firms who do not manage expectations when it comes to fees - referring to the 'small print' will not help them a great deal.

rxg111

I was in a similar situation recently. I instructed the solicitor the EA recommended - their initial quote seemed reasonable so I went with it.

But further on in the purchase process, they kept adding additional charges that almost doubled the original quote. I phoned the Legal Ombudsman for advice, and they were really helpful. They will investigate if you believe the costs were not transparent. They said I could continue with the purchase, but then raise a complaint afterwards, and I might be entitled to some money back if the Ombudsman finds in my favour.

I told the solicitor this was what I planned to do, and they told me they didn't want to represent me any more and returned my deposit!

I can only assume complaints affect their panel membership with mortgage lenders, plus they're viewable on the Ombudsman's website.