Conveyance fees: This sounds high, am I right?

[Cheekychip]

Hello

We are in a rush (offer accepted) to appoint a conveyancing solicitor. I got a quote from one that was recommended as follows:

Conveyancing Fee £1,020.00

PLUS

Land Tax Procedure £50.00
Mortgage Admin Fee £95.00
Photocopying Fee £40.00
SRB CHAPS (TT) Fee £35.00
Total £1,240.00
VAT @ 20% £248.00

Disbursements:

Money Laundering Checks £7.20
Stamp Duty Land Tax £12,060.00
Land Registry Fee £270.00
Local Search Fee £245.00
Drainage and Water Search £65.94
Environmental/Planning Search £81.96
Chancel Check Search £16.31
Mapping Fee £5.88
Land Registry Searches £6.00
Bankruptcy Search £4.00

PURCHASE ESTIMATE TOTAL £14,250.29

Is this reasonable or rather high?

Thanks!

To me yes. We paid less when we bought our house. How did you find the company? Am happy to recommend the fabulous solicitor we used.

I'd get a couple of other quotes to get an idea, but from recommended firms. The stamp duty of £12,060 is unavoidable, as are searches fees, but I'm not sure about the rest. Googling some of the other items listed will tell you if they're essential. It's a while since I did any conveyancing, so not sure what the current fee levels are.

Is this a purchase only? Is the conveyancing solicitor an online company or high street?

Local Search Fee seems high, but you can check this with the Local Authority yourself. All the other fees are fairly standard, they are more or less what we charge. You can do the Land Tax SDLT form yourself but if you make a mistake the Inland Revenue are very difficult to deal with. TT fee is normal as are the Disbursements (query over Local Search Fee - London maybe?). Stamp Duty obviously has to be paid.

Recommendation was through DH mortgage advisor.
I know we should have appointed one before we went and put in offers so now I feel rushed.

I thought £800 was average but may be out of date with that figure.

Also looking after 2 sick toddlers whilst trying to research and find one :-/

Posted at the same time as you Spickle.
It's high street and purchase only.

I don't fancy doing of it myself but it's good to know that the charges seem normal.
I just don't want to rush into an expensive mistake!

How much is the property you are buying?
Fees are usually based on this.

We live in London but purchase is in Leicestershire

405k squirrelkiller

Like squirrel ime fees are often based on a % of purchase price. I'm not sure why!

Hi - just pm'd you details of the solicitor I used on a sale that completed today. She was very good. Have used the same firm on a purchase in the past too.

0.25% of the purchase price is not bad, to be honest. Sometimes there is an additional cost for leasehold, and often it also depends on the hourly rate of the person doing the work.

Thanks squirrelkiller, I feel better now and thanks wowfudge, it would be good to get another quote.

most of these fees are taxes/search fees and will be the same everywhere.

BUT;

the conveyancing fee is about twice what it should be. (guessing purchase price from your stamp duty)
tell them to take a running jump about charging for copying.
ditto for the SDLT form filling fee, should be included.

the extra charges are to pay the commission for the mortgage advisor.

in short - find another solicitor!

We were quoted £750 (vat included) for our purchase with extra for various fees, searches and stamp duty. We are in the south west

I paid about £850 for a flat in London worth £390k small solicitor. Stamp duty is sadly an expensive fact of life.

We got 2 quotes last week. One for about £800 + VAT (plus all the other bits) and one (from a recommended firm) for £950 + VAT. I told the more expensive firm that if they reduced to £850 then I would use them. They did :).

That's high. Ours excluding stamp duty was about £1500 and we used a large national solicitors firm.

I might add we also had other issues which put price up as additional searches etc had to be conducted other than the norm as the previous owners has breached covenant. Think oroginal estimate before the extra work was about £1200 excl stamp duty. Searches are fixed few depending on the council and cannot be changes but a photocopying fee seems a bit odd to me! We didn't get billed separately for that it was all inclusive. I think our flat conveyancing fee was approx £800 whereas yours is £1000.

When I was first selling I went round the four solicitors on the high street, and got quotes ranging from high to eye-watering. And the highest was the one that also wanted to charge for copies!

I went on one of the suitable search sites and found a solicitor (not the ultra-cheap body-shops) for half the price. They were excellent ; quick, organised and the time and advice was there when we had a couple of crises. With hindsight, v. grateful to the partner who talked us out of pulling out of our later purchase as seller was mucking us about - because I'm now in that house and I love it.

they are nowhere near either end of the transaction but that really doesn't matter. Not while we have post, anyway..

Thanks for your input everyone.
It seems there is a wide array of options and opinions on this one.

I got another quote from a highstreet solicitors this morning and the total was estimated £365 less than the first one.

I keep reading 'you get what you pay for' but many peoples experiences seem to be at odds with this.

Specialsubject, can you pm me who you used please?

I need to sort this today otherwise the vendors are going to think we're not serious!

PM coming up!

Thank you everyone.

Sorted one now. On to the next hurdle...........expect to see me on the forum a lot from now on!