Conveyancer fees - is this correct?

thermal2844

FTB's who are pretty clueless regarding standard charges, does this look correct?

---

Payments due to the Government and third parties:
Land Tax
£ 700.00
H.M. Land Registry fees
*
If the Land Registry fee shown here is double that detailed on your quotation, it is because the Land Registry’s electronic documentation registration service cannot be used and is double the cost of the electronic service, e.g. the property may be a new build, new lease, transfer of part, right to buy, unregistered title
£ 95.00
Search Pack (Approximately) ***
£ 269.75
Chancel Indemnity Insurance (incl. IPT) as per Demands and Needs Statement to follow
£5.25
Fees for Pre-Completion Searches
£ 20.00
VAT on the Conveyancing fees and Search Fees
£ 216.75
Total Payments to Government and third parties:
***Please note that these charges are payable, if incurred, whether or not the transaction proceeds to completion.
£ 1,306.75
Payments due to us being our fees for:
The Conveyancing for your purchase at
£160,000.00

£ 599.00
The Lender’s Legal Fees (to be paid by you)
£ 120.00
Completing and filing Inland Revenue SDLT1 Form
£ 75.00
Leasehold Transaction Surcharge
N/A
Total of Our Charges:
Please note that these charges will ONLY be payable if the transaction proceeds
to completion.
£ 794.00
Summary of Conveyancing Estimate Payments to Government and Others
£ 1,306.75
Our Charges
£ 794.00
Total Charges to you:
£ 2,100.75

Steppy1234

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will be able to answer better, but it does seem very expensive considering I only paid £700 to buy my council right to buy approx 2 years ago in South Yorkshire.

mije1983

If you are a FTB then you shouldn't pay any SDLT on a £160,000 purchase.


Edit: What exactly does the search pack include? They are all a set price more or less so that should be the same/similar across different firms.

brentcloning

Seems cheaper than ours! We completed in April and had a quote from a conveyancer around November 2017

Professional Fee (inc vat) - £660

Bank transfer fee - £30
Land Registry Search - £3
Land Reg Registration - £95
Bankruptcy Search - £4
Local Search - £81
Drainage - £56.40
Environmental Search - £54
Total - £983 (No stamp duty as we were FTB).

(Stamp Duty was 0 as we were first time buyers. )

In the end we had to pay a little more as the house we bought wasn't registered so we had to pay for the initial registration (about £100 extra).

Yours is about £794 providing that you don't need to pay Stamp Duty.

thermal2844

Ohhhh the Land Tax is stamp duty? Why is that being included into our quote when we are FTBs? Frustrating, I will need to chase them up!

AnotherJoe

Well since they dont sound on the ball, maybe you might look at switching to someone else that is?

I also would strip out the lenders legal fees, thats nothing to do with conveyancing so it just makes comparison messy. To me it also seems like a damn cheek /attempt to confuse to separately charge you for filling out the SDLT form. They have to do it (i presume even if there is none) so why split it out? Maybe others include it ?

thermal2844

Apparently it's a preliminary quote that will be amended once we've filled in our first time buyer's declaration form. Ok crisis averted!

davidmcn

AnotherJoe wrote: »

I also would strip out the lenders legal fees, thats nothing to do with conveyancing so it just makes comparison messy.

It's the fee for their work in acting for the lender, so you do need to add it in for comparisons rather than strip it out.

To me it also seems like a damn cheek /attempt to confuse to separately charge you for filling out the SDLT form. They have to do it (i presume even if there is none) so why split it out? Maybe others include it ?

Some include it, but mostly it's an additional fee. As long as they don't charge it in transactions which don't actually require an SDLT return to be submitted then it's probably fair enough.

AnotherJoe

davidmcn, but dont they say that legal fee is paid to the lender? Or did i misread?
In any case other lenders will have different legal fees I'd have thought.

davidmcn

AnotherJoe wrote: »

davidmcn, but dont they say that legal fee is paid to the lender? Or did i misread?
In any case other lenders will have different legal fees I'd have thought.

Think you're misunderstanding - normally when you're buying, your solicitor will also be acting on behalf of your mortgage lender (but you're paying the costs). Either that's all bundled into a standard purchase fee (on the basis that most purchases involve a mortgage), or in this case they apportion some of it to the mortgage-related bits of the transaction.

None of it is going to the lender and it's not going to vary with different lenders.

Rambosmum

£1400 (not including stamp duty) seems ok. You could probably get it cheaper though. We paid that to buy and sell (but did get a small f&f discount).