My Conveyancing Fees... Fair or No?...

Adam182

Hey everyone, I received my conveyancing fees today and just wanted to see what everyone thought on the fairness I was dealt. I wont reveal who it was through until afterwards.

Note on top of this there is also Stamp Duty at £560 and Land Registry fee of £190

Location: North Yorkshire
Purchase Price: £153000

Guest101

Is this an estate agent inhouse team?


£600 just for the service. It's not the highest ive seen, but it's top end of what I'd expect to pay.

Surrey_EA

If you've had a reasonable service from the solicitors/conveyancers along the way I'd say is not too bad.

Potentially there's been many hours of work, possibly over several months.

Without knowing more details about the specifics of the transaction it's difficult to comment further.

davidmcn

Guest101 wrote: »

£600 just for the service. It's not the highest ive seen, but it's top end of what I'd expect to pay.

Note the £150 surcharge for having a mortgage involved, which many other firms would have thrown in as a standard service (given that most purchases do have a mortgage).


We don't know whether it matches any quote given, but nothing looks outrageous or odd.

LEJC

A little over the average that I would expect to pay but not extortionate.

Cliveman_Pieman

Although it hasn't stated explicitly, it looks like the inference is that everything below the subtotal is a disbursement. Some of those "disbursements" are look suspiciously to me like legal fees, and they are rebadging them to make their fees appear lower.


eg Preparing an SDLT return is a legal service. So is document archiving. I make their "real" legal fee to be about £850 which is quite high, unless you are in London or SE?

Fosterdog

It seems a lot to me. It is just over double what I paid less than a year ago with a local firm in South Wales, although mine didn't have any stamp duty payable so there is a £102 saving there, but my land registry fee was included but was only £20. I was given a list of costs up front and also given a minimum and a maximum price depending on exactly which services were needed on our purchase. We came in at around £40 above the minimum and around £500 below the maximum.

However what I or anyone else thinks. Were you given a quote or at least a list of costs and charges before entering a contract with them?

Purplepenguin88

It's lower than all the quotes I received (except for all the factory conveyance firms, which were only marginally cheaper), but then we were buying a 3 bed in Hertfordshire, and the purchase price was more than twice what you're paying so this may factor into their pricing schedule.
I think ours before disbursements was about £750+VAT for the actual fee. But there were a lot less extra disbursements than that so it came out at about £1350 total (including VAT). (Obviously plus stamp duty which was over £7000).

kingstreet

The only issue here is do the fees match what you were quoted at the outset? If not, you have a valid complaint.

If it does, you don't.

There is no "fair" it's down to what you contracted to pay and if that's what was charged.

kingstreet

davidmcn wrote: »

Note the £150 surcharge for having a mortgage involved, which many other firms would have thrown in as a standard service (given that most purchases do have a mortgage)

Acting for lender and completion of SDLT return are part of the 'headline' fee for the solicitors we regularly use.

I used to mention firms like the one shown above regularly, but not recently.

ACG

Without doubt it is high.
But as kingstreet says, if this is what you signed up for, then yes it is fair.

Did you ask for a quote initially?
What did it say?