to think £1,000 conveyancing fees for property sale is a bit pricey?

[crazycatlady]

Boring topic I know, but looking for a range of responses.

We've just been quoted £1,000 for conveyancing fees for selling our property. We are in London and the sale price is £420k. We are not buying a property so no conveyancing work to do on that front.

It is the same solicitor we used for our previous sale (and purchase) in 2007. Can't remember what we paid but I seem to remember it was less than £1k for the whole lot.

Does this sound expensive or AIBU?

It is on the high side but are search fees included etc? They might have gone up pretty significantly. I'm not surprised that costs generally have gone up though. PI insurance premiums have increased, there is less work around and still more or less the same expenses to meet.

I don't think the fee is unreasonable, especially compared to the EA who will be getting around 5k.

Thanks azazello, it includes all disbursements etc. Good point about less work for conveyancing solicitors... I don't mind paying £1k as long as I'm not being a mug by not shopping around.

Sounds a bit high. I've just sold a similarly priced house in London (exchanged today) and solicitor is charging around £650 including fees, disbursements etc.

Was your solicitor good Oberon? If you're in South London I'd love a recommendation.

Congrats btw

Thanks :o.

He's OK, not overly communicative but I've had exactly the same experience with different solicitors in the past. The firm is in West London but happy to do most things by post/email. I can send you the details if you like.

FWIW when I bought the house I was already living in London but used the family solicitor in Yorkshire and it didn't present any real problems. House sales are soooo slow anyway!

Is it a flat or a house? Flats tend to be a bit pricier as there's more work involved having to deal with the lease. Also the only disbursements you should need to pay for is Land Registry title documents (around £10).

I would shop around if I were you. You don't have to have a solicitor near you - you could have one in Scotland if there's one there you like. The problem is that (well the firm I work for and a lot I've encountered) base their fees on the price of the property you are selling, and of course the VAT pushes it up a bit too.

Sorry also some firms charge about £40 for a bank transfer admin fee for transferring funds to your lender/you

Take a look here

I've just sold and used them and they were fab.

The company we used was brilliant and the total cost to us was

Not true greatballs there are other local searches that are done too. Ours in total was

It's on the high side but not by a massive amount - our most recent fees for buying and selling together were 1700, and we were talking about 2 much cheaper houses. We're in the se but not London.

Sorry, got confused greatballs for selling, you're right. It is just the deeds, I got confused with our purchase (which fell through) but for which we paid for the searches

The only fees you should be paying as a seller are:

Archive Fee
Telegraphic Transfer Fee
Call Credit fee (per name)
Official Copy Land Registry Documents

The total should be less than £100 (excl. VAT)

Sounds a little high, you shouldn't have search fees as a vendor just got to use a standard firm contract to transfer title and set up the exchange of monies from my hazy law school memories. We recently used so one in east London who charged 500 when buying somewhere.

Oh and they need to respond to buyer queries too.

hmm not sure what to do now. It's a firm we've used before so I feel comfortable with them but it does seem most have paid less. It's a house not a flat so no tricky leasehold issues to deal with.

Having spoken to DH again it seems the £1k also includes VAT, so not such a bad deal afterall?

Just totalled up my quote. It was £672 + VAT (so about £806 incl. VAT) with all fees and disbursements.

We exchanged yesterday on a flat sale and house buy in SE London and we paid £1,000 for each side. House was just over £700k. I have to say though, she was fantastic and I would happily have paid double. We only moved 3 years ago and I was surprised by how much fees seem to have gone up.

ok I think we'll stick with what we've got. they were brilliant last time with a complex deal so hopefully worth the dosh and doesn't seem too much over the odds. thanks all, much appreciated.

I used a local solicitor I trusted for a recent purchase as I wanted to be sure everything was done properly - buying carries much more risk than selling! When I sold my last house though, I used a company with fixed fees I found online - they were very good and very reasonable, I would happily recommend them. Selling is much more straightforward.

I think £ 1000 is excessive - I would expect to pay £ 500 & VAT & £ 8 Office Copy Entries of Title.

Funny how we moan about Solicitors fees but we pay Estate Agents charges which are thousands of pounds more??

Some Estate Agents really earn their money, and others do virtually nothing and you wonder why you're paying them a vast fortune.

We sold an investment property recently and the Estate Agent did virtually all the work, chasing up and down the chain and keeping everyone informed and we didn't mind paying them. However, when we tried to sell our own home earlier in the year (different part of the country) the Estate Agent barely even got off his backside. We ended up doing all the work ourselves, but eventually the chain collapsed.

We must be mad but we're having another go.

we paid over 2k for sale & purchase, but had been rec'd the firm by several friends and they were very local which meant when things started going horribly wrong (as they always seem to) we were able to camp out in their office and harrass them until they got things done.

Forgot to say that we always use a local firm of solicitors in our town and have got to know our solicitor well. He discounted his fees for us as he was doing two transactions for us (ended up as just one though). I think it does help to use a local firm as mrsravelstein says. If anything needs sorting, you can just drop into their office for a chat.

Good point. We did end up having to do that last time. Decision made!