Solicitors' costs

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Mid negotiation on a house, and have two quotes from solicitors which differ wildly - one is £750 plus fees, the other £1200 plus fees.

The cheaper one is a small firm, recommended to us by friends who used it for wills. The more expensive one is a much larger company, recommended by another friend who is a solicitor himself (though not with them).

How do these quotes sound to you? We are in Kent.

The latter sounds very expensive. I'm in Nottingham (so maybe slightly cheaper) and we're paying around £800 inc, which my dad (who lives in Essex) saw as the top end of what we should be paying.
I would always go with a personal recommendation - has your solicitor friend used the bigger firm himself, or does he just know of it through work?

We're in SE London and I think the highest quote I got was around £700 - all the rest were around £400. I got a lot of them online though, I don't know if that makes a difference. The £700 was someone really local and have online system whereby you can track progress and one of the £400 had 100% recommendation rating online. Maybe do a bit more fishing around.

Thanks comtessa. My solicitor friend knows them by reputation more than anything else I think.

Thanks BoBoo - have you finished the process yet and were they any good? We are NE Kent/SE London border so any recommendations appreciated!

No. My husband has just come round to thinking that we could manage the work the needs doing on a house we both love, but I've just heard someone's put in an offer higher than we can afford :(

I think the one with good recommendations (albeit not personal ones) was via a link on the Cheltenham & Gloucester website.

Ours are approx 700 incl fees so would say certainly the second sounds expensive