Registereing a deposit as a legal charge part 2

SmlSave

They are charging you extra to act for your lender?????

The only search that is a legal requirement is the Local Land Search, find out how much the relevant council charges so they don't charge extra.

Please get estimates from other local firms. Solicitors who are heavily linked with estate agents (starting with a letter p, e or c especially) are only good with bog standard transactions. Aka are sausage factories

eddddy

You need to be a little more precise in your posting...

Habib2342 wrote: »

The advert states the following :

'Incentive from Westcombe group, they will offer £500 towards the applicants legal costs should they use one of our referral solictors.'

So it's not the EA that's recommending/referring to the solicitor, it's the developer. (Westcombe Group are developers.)

So...

• your brother is using the solicitor to buy one flat, and may never ever use them again.
  
• Westcombe Group are probably referring dozens of people to those solicitors, and may continue to do so in future years.

So if there's a problem/dispute during the purchase between your brother and the developer, will the solicitor be 100% on your brothers side - or could they be just a little biased towards Westcombe because they don't want to upset them and lose their future business?


The referral fee is probably included in this amount:

Habib2342 wrote: »

Acting for you in your purchase

In London, for comparison, I've recently seen a selling quote for £650, of which £450 was a referral fee which went straight to the EA. (i.e. the seller would pay £650 but get £200 worth of legal work.)

AnotherJoe

'Incentive from Westcombe group, they will offer £500 towards the applicants legal costs should they use one of our referral solictors.'
====

That is not "knocking £500 off the purchase price".

Its reducing solicitors costs by £500 (that for all you know might be £1000 more expensive than someone else)

On a related matter, why do you think there is no stamp duty????

Habib2342

Good evening all,

I apologise for the vagueness fo my previous posts yesterday. It was late at night and I was exhaused from a 25 mile cycle ride, so now I will attempt to be precise and to the point with the latest developments;


I have taken your advice and managed to source a cheaper quote through http://www.onlineconveyancingquote.co.uk. where I have now instructed the solicitor to being the conveyancing work.

A Homebuyer report and valuation will take place this Wednesday.

'Incentive from Westcombe group, they will offer £500 towards the applicants legal costs should they use one of our referral solictors.'
====

That is not "knocking £500 off the purchase price".

the estate agent actually said this;
' [FONT=&quot]I would like to confirm that the £500 incentive, for using one of the two referred solicitors , will be deducted from the purchase price of the property.[/FONT]
'
'On a related matter, why do you think there is no stamp duty????'

This statement was referring to the stamp duty payable if it was my brother's second property which it isn't as he;s currently renting and will only have to pay the lower stamp duty free ( 210,000-125000)*2% = £1700.

So things are moving along, just have to proceed carefully.