Conveyancer charges for remortgaging

Saitob

Hello,

I would just like to gauge experience and opinion of remortgaging fees.

The first time on a "fee free" mortgage a bill to the tune of £50 was charged by the conveyancer(employed by and working for the mortgage provider) for 'transferring funds' from our new mortgage provider to the conveyancer and then on to the old provider.

Both of these charges have been fairly hidden until the very end of the process. I complained to the provider, conveyancer and mortgage broker but got nowhere.

This year a similar scenario leads to a £150 bill for fund transfer, ID check etc. Am i alone in thinking if a bank/building society decides to employ a third party to work on their behalf then it should be them paying for it and not the customer? How common is this?

To me it feels like a scam! But I'd be pleased to hear what you have to say on the matter...

silvercar

Hi @Saitob and welcome to the forum.

If you were paying for this service yourself, you would expect disbursements would be charged separately from the fee to do the work. That said in the key facts there should be details of the ‘free legals’ and what that includes. Have you looked at these documents?

ACG

Its one of the reasons we tend to go with cashback and then source our own solicitor.

These fee free solicitors get paid so little, they try to find other ways to make money.

Im with you and I imagine your broker is too. But there is little we can do about it.

user1977

Am i alone in thinking if a bank/building society decides to employ a third party to work on their behalf then it should be them paying for it and not the customer? How common is this?

The default is that you pay for the lender's solicitors. After all, that's what happens when you buy with a mortgage (though it's less visible then as the lender's solicitor is usually your solicitor too).

Saitob

Silvercar, this was our mortgage around two years ago, at the time when i complained about what i felt were hidden fees the basis of the response was that we(Leeds BS) didnt charge you and it was the conveyancer that charged you. I tried to explain my point that every remortgage would surely involve transferring funds from one provider to another in which case everyone would be liable to pay this charge. They just didnt care/see anything wrong. My issue wasn't with paying fees it was with the hidden aspect.

Saitob

ACG, yes we have a good relationship with our broker and he offered to escalate our complaint but unfortunately it didn't lead anywhere either.

For our recent remortgage i was already suspicious so asked immediately regarding fees only to be told that they wont know until later on…it just seems so dodgy.

Saitob

User1977, maybe it's a service that needs to be paid for, i get it. But considering we get the email sent to us saying that 'we are not working on behalf of you' it seems off to charge us!

To a lay person like myself it feels unjust. Along the lines of me arranging for a milkman to deliver me milk, we agree on a price and delivery schedule. Later he looks at our address and its a bit far for his liking so he puts the milk in a taxi and sends it to my house, then has the cheek of billing me extra for the taxi….

Maybe you can tell I'm enraged!

Isthisforreal99

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82008015#Comment_82008015

But not enraged enough to go with an offer without 'free legals' and pay for the whole process yourself? Unfortunately that is your choice - accept that 'free' doesn't mean everything is free and pay a fraction of what you would have if you were to engage your own legals.

ACG

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82008010#Comment_82008010

The broker has no flack over the conveyancers. Nothing was going to happen with that.

There is an argument here though…

They have told you they did not know about charges - thats fine and in theory is correct. There might be a coal mine search required for example, not needed on every property.

But money transfer and ID check is presumably part of every application and so they could have made you aware of those.

MyRealNameToo

Solicitors, conveyencers etc bills tend to be made up of two parts… a) fees, their hourly rate for doing the work and b) disbursements which is a pass through of the third party fees they have incurred like costs for searches or CHAPs payments

So what exactly is the charge for? £50 sounds very similar to the cost of two CHAPs payments which may just be coincidence, could be the one CHAPs payment plus something else that costs £25.

At the end of the day you are going to be paying everything the conveyencer charges your new lender, its just a question of if its an up front fee or hidden in the interest rate etc

ACG

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82008294#Comment_82008294

Free legals, historically meant free legals.

The only exception to that was anything out of the ordinary. If you have built an extension for example and did not have building regs, you might need an indemnity policy. That would be extra. If a coal mine search was required, that would be extra.

But those are things not required on every transaction.

Conveyancers now seem to be finding ways to bolt on a few quid here and a few quid there - we have one that £350 in charges! Some of those costs were fine, but £200 of that was to add a security check to the land registry - the client ticked a box without reading it which is obviously what they rely on. Other silly little things but they added up.

Mortgage lenders have driven the cost of conveyancing so low, its not feasible for conveyancers to deliver it. Thats not the customers fault but it does end up on them. Free legals is rarely free. It is very wrong and does need looking into really.