Scotland Only - solicitors' fees for mortgage redemption 29 November 2007 at 12:27PM in Mortgage-Free Wannabe 9 replies 17.8K views

Andy_Edinburgh

I'm in the process of formally closing-out my now-fully-paid mortgage; I live in Scotland which means I'm required to use a solicitor to do the final discharge of the security on the property (the bank can't just post me the deeds, unfortunately).

Does anyone have any experience of doing this, and if so how much did it cost, and are there any pitfalls I should be aware of?

butterflymum

Oops, hit thanks button instead of Quote.

Anyway, I'm not in Scotland, but noticed someone posted on this the other day, will see if I can find the thread. Basically, they were with A & L and they paid, from memory, in region of £180. It caught my eye as we have just recently Redeemed our Mortgage in Northern Ireland and I was anxious to find out if we could expect the same requirement (have since been assured we don't).

butterflymum

OK this was the post in question:


25-11-2007, 12:14 PM
Too Bloo
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Join Date: Sep 2007
Post Count: 6
Thanked 2 Times in 2 Posts



My wife and I have been fortunate enough to pay off our mortgage recently,Alliance and Leicester. They sent our deeds and other paper work back to us including notification that under Scottish law, we would have to get a soliciter to sign a discharge of mortgage, This has cost approx £182.00. So we might have been better off keeping a small amount of mortgage debt. The soliciter did tell us that if we did lose the deeds, that it was fairly easy to obtain a replacement and that very soon there would be no reason to keep a paper copy at all as everything would be kept electronically anyway.




Maybe you could PM them with any question.

Hope this helps.

Big_Nige

I was lucky enough to pay off our mortgage back in July, the discharge fee was £90 + VAT. The solicitors are storing the deeds (at no charge) for us. My folks paid thier mortgage off approx 10 years ago & they paid about the same amount.

Big.

Too_Bloo

Andy_Edinburgh wrote: »

I'm in the process of formally closing-out my now-fully-paid mortgage; I live in Scotland which means I'm required to use a solicitor to do the final discharge of the security on the property (the bank can't just post me the deeds, unfortunately).

Does anyone have any experience of doing this, and if so how much did it cost, and are there any pitfalls I should be aware of?

Hi Andy,
the exact cost is £182.75, we are using a west lothian lawyer I dont know if there will be price variations depending on the solicitor you use.
I dont think there`s any reason the bank can`t just post the deeds, we received ours from our building society quickly and with no fuss. As far as I`m aware there`s no pitfalls other than you might get the work completed cheaper than us (for conveniance we didn`t shop around)

ailuro2

I know someone who just did this, it cost her £147.00

I was shocked it was so cheap- normally solicitors charge an arm and a leg!

candest

Does anyone know if in Scotland I have to get a solicitor to the discharge or can I send the Discharge letter . I'd prefer to safe the money doing it myself.

googler

We've paid ours off recently, and once we'd paid, the lender sent us the deeds, with a covering letter ;

"..confirm your mortgage account with us has been repaid in full.

Enclosed are the title deeds to your property and we would suggest that you contact a solicitor to draft the appropriate form of discharge. The discharge is the formal receipt confirming that all sums due to the bank and secured by legal mortgage against your property have been repaid. The discharge requires our signature, therefore you should have this forwarded to the above address, where we will sign and return the form to your solicitor"

So, you may be able to draft the letter yourself, but your lender may 'suggest' that you use a solicitor.

The discharge is sent to your lender, and if they're like ours, an attorney for the lender signs it and has it witnessed. If it's not in the correct form, your lender may refuse to sign it, and you'll have to re-draft it.

Also included in our solicitor's work was recording the discharge with Registers of Scotland.

Our local high-street firm charged us £50 plus VAT for the work, plus £30 paid to Registers of Scotland as fee for recording the discharge, making £88.75 total.

Hope this helps

wn1

No wonder this seems seems comparatively cheap for a solicitor's services, but in fact it is no longer than a short one page letter, and details of how to register it can be found on the Scottish Land Register's site.

It seems to me something which a lay person could do perfectly well if someone would provide a style eg anyone on here who has a properly drafted Discharge could perhaps reproduce the requisite wording for the rest of us.

neartic

can antone tell me how long it takes for solicitor to get mortgage discharged, i gave my paperwork to lawyer on dec 13th 2011 and still do not have them back on the 23rd march 2012