Full cash payment for a property - how?

EnergyUser

I am helping a elderly family friend with their house purchase. Last year they sold a property so have cash on deposit with NS&I. After staying with us for several months they have now found a property that they wish to buy and have just initiated the process. My question is how does the money get transferred to the solicitor for this transaction? The sum is in the region of £400k. Does he need to get the funds from NS&I into his current account and then make daily transfers to the solicitor of £10k for eight weeks? Or is there another way?

JGB1955

Just write the solicitor a cheque for the £400K?  (The funds will have to have been previously transferred from NS&I to the nominated current account.,)

canaldumidi

Which NS&I account?

With most he will have set up a 'nominated account' usually his current acount, and this is where NS&I will send the money. He cannot send it direct from NS&I to his solicitor.

From his nominated account it will depend which bank he uses. Some (eg nationwide) restrict Faster Payments to £10K per transaction, but he could do multiple transactions on the same day. Others restrict to a certain amount per day. He'll need to check with his bank.

Or he could use CHAPS to transfer the whole lot in one go - cost depends on his bank but £25 - £35.

https://www.nsandi.com/help/manage-your-details/how-to-receive-money-from-nsandi

Snookie12cat

EnergyUser said:

I am helping a elderly family friend with their house purchase. Last year they sold a property so have cash on deposit with NS&I. After staying with us for several months they have now found a property that they wish to buy and have just initiated the process. My question is how does the money get transferred to the solicitor for this transaction? The sum is in the region of £400k. Does he need to get the funds from NS&I into his current account and then make daily transfers to the solicitor of £10k for eight weeks? Or is there another way?

You just go into the bank with the solicitor completion statement, pay a chaps fee and they will send it. 

No solicitor will let them do daily transfers

propertyhunter

Our solicitor lets us do daily transfers of £20k to hit our total of £400k. But that's ridiculous - we just arranged a telegraphic transfer for £23 with NatWest and did it one day. If you want to save on costs, you can see if a cheque is an option, but it doesn't clear as quickly, but it's a lot faster than daily transactions for 8 weeks!

user1977

Her solicitor will explain all of this to her, it isn't a mystery she has to solve for herself.

[Deleted User]

My solicitor allows transfers  depends on your own banking limits . For smaller amounts of around 100k I would as I can do it in 2 transfers .
For a house sale best to just pay for the transfer in one go in your situation

Flugelhorn

During lockdown, I did daily transfers of 20K / day - the solicitors accounts department were great and e-mailed me as soon as they got notification of the payment and kept a running total. Had to be careful with bank hols and weekends etc 

Next purchases were  easier - able to do chaps transfer to the solicitor in person at the bank - went into local branch (well Nat West for my RBS account), took details, bank card, ID and the staff were great. - they ask lots of questions to make sure you know what you are doing and the transfers aren't to anywhere dodgy etc - all quite sensible 

JReacher1

You can send a cheque if you don’t want to pay the chaps fee. Just takes five days to clear so you need to send it in time. 

saajan_12

Also depends on what your solicitor will accept as part of their standard fees and what they would charge extra for. Receiving and banking a cheque , or keeping track of 40+ payments may incur extra costs in excess of the CHAPS fee. 

Slithery

My solicitor would let you do as many transfers as you wanted to - but there was an additional charge for them.
IIRC it was £10 per transfer for 4 or more.