Additional solicitor charge query

[Deleted User]

Hi,
I am a first-time buyer in the process of buying a property. I have received a letter from my solicitor and it states they are going to add the sum of £100 to my completion statement for acting on behalf of my mortgage company.

If this is the case, I would have expected the charge of £100 to be in the original quote. I don't know if this is a common practice/fee but I wanted to get the opinion of fellow MSE members before raising the additional fee with my solicitor.
Any advice would be much appreciated.

davidmcn

It's fairly common to structure the fees in that way (the mortgage does mean additional work for them to do) but they should have included it in the quote if they knew you were buying with a mortgage. Or frankly, they should include it by standard given most purchases will have a mortgage, and only remove it if they know it's a cash purchase.

Thrugelmir

Deleted_User wrote: »

If this is the case, I would have expected the charge of £100 to be in the original quote.

Firstly you need to ascertain what the additional charge actually relates too. The solicitor can only estimate the time to be spent at the outset. If it's greater then you pick up the cost. Lenders costs being paid by yourself. £83 (excluding the VAT) isn't very much time in a solicitors office.

eddddy

Unless you said at the outset that your lender was using a different solicitor, it seems a bit 'underhand' not to mention the fee for representing the lender in their quote (or even just listing it as an 'optional extra').

What kind of a solicitor are they?

A local one, or an online one that advertises low headline prices (then adds lots of 'extras' which other solicitors include as standard), or perhaps one recommended by the EA?