Conveyancing cost

[BeauticianNotMagician81]

Does anyone know what we are likely to pay. Sold at £261,000 and buying at £345,000. Had a quote for £2,337 which I thought was quite a lot. Any recommendations?

Is that for sale and purchase? Seems quite high. We’re paying around that, but selling/buying in the 800k area

@Closetlibrarian yes for both.

I think my fees (excluding stamp duty) were about £1800. Sale and purchase price shouldn't make any difference to conveyancing costs?

@smurfmonkey that's about the figure I was hoping for. I've done a few quotes online and the conveyancer that gave that quote comes out £500 cheaper through different search engines so I think I'll go with that.

You don't have to spend long on the sellers roll call thread to read of numerous posters bemoaning the performance of their solicitor.

Conveyancing is typically a high volume, low margin industry, so generally the firms offering the cheaper pricing will likely have to take on a greater number of cases to make a profit, meaning the solicitor/conveyancer's time is spread more thinly.

Personally I'm not sure that I think property conveyancing choices should be made purely on the basis of cost, given the sums of money the property itself is likely costing. There is a strong argument for paying a little more to get someone really good.

@Mildura yes that does make sense. It's just so expensive. Never moving again

I realise everything to do with moving home feels expensive, but less than £2500 for what is a fair amount of legal work is pretty good value.

I went with a local firm and didn't base my decision on price but on how quickly firms got back to me and how professionally they dealt with my request for a quote. Most of the firms local to me charged roughly the same fees wise.

Unless you can go on someone else's recommendation though sometimes it is just pot luck. I would agree paying dirt cheap for an online conveyancer probably isn't advisable, my seller used one and they were difficult to get hold of.

@BeauticianNotMagician81 get a recommendation from someone you know who has moved recently.
I'd rather pay an extra £500 on a £500k transaction than do it cheaply and badly.

Ask local estate agents who they'd recommend. They're on the phone to them every day. Also a local solicitor means you can drop papers round in person and also be very nice to the receptionists - saves postage costs, losses abd delays.

We paid £895 plus VAT plus disbursements, searches etc so approximately £1450. Our solicitor was fantastic even though we never met him. He was from Setfords, in Guildford. Everything done by email and often responded same day, even at the weekends.

Ask local estate agents who they'd recommend.
Estate Agents and conveyances are too much in each others' pockets for me to take a recommendation at face value. Get a recommendation from a paying customer.
Conveyancers are relatively cheap. Compare how much you pay an Estate Agent and how much you pay a conveyancer! A good conveyancer is worth their fee - they are assisting you to make sure that one of the biggest transactions of your life is watertight and they are charging you less than 1% of the price involved.

I'm in the Midlands. I've just sold a house and paid £685 for the conveyancing and .7% to the estate agent.

We're paying £2k(gross) for the conveyancing on a freehold house purchase (no sale) at £550k. It's local firm, we used them 6 months ago on a tricky sale. A decent conveyancer makes life a lot easier, I would pay the extra again.

We're paying £600 on a purchase price of £85k

@BeauticianNotMagician81 ours came in around the same as yours this includes local searches and indemnity policies we took out.

We were recommended our conveyancer and was prepared to pay a bit more because of this. We've been pleased as they have been brilliant in what has been quite a stressful buying/selling process.

Agree with previous posters - simply don't scrimp on solicitors! The fee to estate agents is, in my opinion, quite out of proportion with the solicitors (ours ended up more than 3x more money)
For a straightforward transaction, solicitors fees can seem steep. If you run into issues, a good one is worth their weight in gold. I was quite impressed when I received my sale bill from them and it was under £1k, after 6 months of protracted negotiations with the freeholder and talking most days by phone by the final 2 months...