Solicitor fees nearly £2k above estimate..

Rick62

Got it, so the mortgage advance was £119,371, not £199,371

For the sale they charged £498 plus £398 disbursements.

For the purchase they charged £1,052 (fee & disbursements) plus land reg £220, 'c' £155, Chancel £145.

If this is more than they quoted then ring and ask them to justify the additional costs, particularly the disbursements look high.

If you are still not satisfied I believe you can make a formal complaint to the law society?

royalsteve

TheGame7 wrote: »

Sorry, I should have been clearer..

The solicitor fees do indeed include the stamp duty (but I was asked to pay for the searches up front).

The original estimate came to £4200 approx (£500 for the house sale [legal fees, postage/telephone], £1200 for the house purchase [legal fees, legal fees acting for lender, search fees, Land Tax Return, Land Registry fees, Bank telegraphic transfer fee] and £2500 for the stamp duty):

I had a call from the solicitor saying the actual fee to pay is £5800 approx. - a lot more than the estimate and the only obvious addition I can think of is a Chancel Liabilty Insurnace at £150 approx.

The house buyers pulled out after a week before anything had taken place beyond inital solicitor contact! Is it likely the length of time (nearly 4 months) has resulted in this - even though we were not at fault!!

This is £1600 more than I expected - well £1900 when you consider I paid £300 up front for searches.

I will receive the breakdown tomorrow.

If it makes you feel any better my solicitors bill inc stamp duty was almost £14K (alot of it to Fatcat Brown)..for a normal 4 bed house bought in Reading in march though the value has increased by approx 15% since

Yes, i would check the solictors costs......i got ours to write out exactly what we would be charged and any unforseen (lol!) additional charges would have to agreed beforehand; we had no addiotnal charges so all ends well.

I would ask your solictor to explain, they may have a mistake....its up to them to explain.....remember you are their customer and they are working for you......all solictors should remember this.

Richard_Webster

The £1052.16 for costs and disbursements on the purchase - what does this include? You would expect about £10 worth of Land Registry etc searches and £30 or so + vat for an electronic transfer fee. Was the local search and any other environmental searches included? Or are Capita a private search company that were paid £155.10 for searches? Typically you would expect a figure of £150-£250 for searches so it might be that.

You do not normally get £300 + disbursements on a sale unless it was a flat and the managing agents charged a large fee for information. Another possibility is that some indemnity policies were needed, but even that kind of figure looks on the high side unless more than one such policy was needed.

The thing here really is that this kind of confusion is usually solved by a quick phone call to the solicitor asking for an explanation of where the figures come from.

Basically though the main figures that are critical come out of OP's own realisation:

So thats £1k extra I owe.

Also, the mortgage company seems to take £600 from the £120k, so I owe £600.

Woody69_2

You are selling for £125000 buying at £246000 which would give you a mortgage of £121000. However your new mortgage is only for £119371 hence an extra £1629 due.