RESIDENTIAL PURCHASE & SALE (FREEHOLD): OUR LEGAL COSTS: ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES
We offer our clients NO MOVE NO FEE TERMS. If your transaction does not proceed for any reason you will only pay for the expenses e.g. search fees, Land Registry fees we have already paid on your behalf.
For a standard residential freehold purchase transaction our time charges would be a fixed charge in the range of £695.00 + VAT to £1,245.00 + VAT*.
For a standard residential freehold sale transaction our time charges would be a fixed charge in the range of £695.00 + VAT to £1,245.00 + VAT*.
No property is the same, and our charges will reflect the particular requirements of your purchase, including variation depending on the value of the property and the complexity of the transaction. Very occasionally we may look to work on a time & materials basis at hourly rates for the particular staff involved current from time to time.
Because of this, when you first contact us we will ask you for some information about the transaction.
Once you have supplied us with these details, we will email you with a full, detailed, transparent, ‘no hidden charges’ written costs quotation, almost always that same day.
If you engage us on the transaction, our Cashiers will need you to post initial funding of £265.00 at the outset of the transaction, to cover initial third-party expenses such as (in a purchase) search fees that we will need to incur on your behalf. This will be set against the final amount of our invoice to you at completion of the purchase, or the remaining balance of it (after meeting expenses incurred) returned to you if the transaction were to fall through.
Below is an indication of our possible charges and expenses on a straightforward freehold PURCHASE at £150,000:
| Time charges |
Charges |
VAT |
| Time charges |
£845.00 |
£169.00 |
| Office supplies charges (copying, printing, other incidentals |
£101.40 |
£20.28 |
| Our same day bank-to-bank transfer charge |
£35.00 |
£7.00 |
| Third-party expenses |
Charges |
VAT |
| Land Registry registration fee |
£95.00 |
£0.00 |
| Search fee (searches bundle) |
£119.27 |
£23.85 |
| Chancel repair indemnity policy premium |
£15.79 |
£0.00 |
| Bankruptcy search fee (per person) |
£2.00 |
£0.00 |
| Land Registry official search fee |
£3.00 |
£0.00 |
| Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) (£0.00 on all purchases up to a value of £500,000 provided that completion takes place by 31/02/21 when the current extension to the zero-rated band to £500,000 currently expires.) |
£0.00* |
£0.00 |
| Total + VAT |
£1,216.46* |
£220.13 |
| Total including VAT |
£1,436.59 |
You will need to pay Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) on your purchase if any of the following apply:
- you already own a property (that you are not selling);
- the purchase price of the property is over £125,000; or
- the purchase price of the property is over £500,000.
We will provide you in our quotation letter at the outset of the transaction with a calculation of the SDLT provisionally payable at completion (note that rates may be changed at any time by legislation).
The Government’s SDLT calculator is at www.tax.service.gov.uk/calculate-stamp-duty-land-tax/#/intro .
* Our standard time charge includes correspondence between you and us and a reasonable (but not excessive) number of telephone calls, emails and consultations in order for us to liaise with you throughout the transaction(s). If matters prove more complex, more time-consuming or more protracted than originally anticipated (for example involving in our view a non-standard volume of emails or telephone calls), then it may be necessary for us to review the time charge upwards proportionately. The charge for incidental office supplies (e.g. postages, copying, printing, telephones) would also need to be increased if large amount of paperwork were to require copying or we were to have to send faxed correspondence or print emails to a greater degree than would be usual or if printing, or if the time taken in telephone calls, were to be higher than would be usual. But we would advise you of any such additional charge beforehand.
ADDITIONAL CHARGES
You should note that an additional, separate, time charge (and if applicable office supplies charges) will apply for any additional work requested and/or documentation drawn and/or considered, for example:
UNEQUAL SHARES
If you are purchasing jointly and you intend to hold the property in un-equal shares, although not an absolute legal requirement, it will be essential for your own protection in all but the simplest cases that you have a properly drafted declaration of trust. If this is a straightforward declaration of trust we would estimate that our charges for drafting that would be £175 + VAT. except where we advise you that tax or other specialist professional advice is required.
GIFTED DEPOSIT
If part of purchase monies are being gifted to you by a 3rd party, we must prepare and get in a gift declaration to be signed by the 3rd party. Our additional charge for that would be £90 + VAT for the first, with £45 + VAT for each subsequent declaration.
LEASEHOLD
If the property is leasehold, invariably a 3rd party expense for registering notice of change of ownership with the landlord/management company is payable, but until we get further into the transaction and see a copy of the lease we will not know the amount of this notice fee. However typically it is in the region of £75.00 + VAT.
You may be required to pay certain other 3rd party expenses to any superior landlords and/or to their solicitors or managing agents or management companies. These “3rd party expenses” cannot be known to us at the time of costs quotation, and often are not advised to us until shortly before completion.
Leasehold quotations include a £130.00 supplemental time charge because of the extra difficulty of leasehold transactions. Where we have quoted for freehold, and it later turns out that the property is to be owned leasehold, that £130.00 supplemental charge is added to the freehold transaction time charge quoted.
GENERAL
Generally, though, ask us for a quotation and we will email you a comprehensive pack of explanatory material and the costs numbers.
Below is an indication of our charges and expenses on a straightforward freehold SALE at £150,000:
|
Time charges |
Charges |
VAT |
|
Time charges |
£795.00 |
£159.00 |
|
Office supplies charges (copying, printing, other incidentals |
£95.40 |
£19.08 |
|
Our same day bank-to-bank transfer charge |
£35.00 |
£7.00 |
|
Third-party expenses |
Charges |
VAT |
|
Land Registry charges for official copies of the title register and plan (estimated) |
£12.00 |
£0.00 |
|
Total + VAT |
£937.40* |
£185.08 |
|
Total including VAT |
£1,122.48 |
|
* Our standard time charge includes correspondence between you and us and a reasonable (but not excessive) number of telephone calls, emails and consultations in order for us to liaise with you throughout the transaction(s). If matters prove more complex, more time-consuming or more protracted than originally anticipated (for example involving in our view a non-standard volume of emails or telephone calls), then it may be necessary for us to review the time charge upwards proportionately. The charge for incidental office supplies (e.g. postages, copying, printing, telephones) would also need to be increased if large amount of paperwork were to require copying or we were to have to send faxed correspondence or print emails to a greater degree than would be usual or if printing, or if the time taken in telephone calls, were to be higher than would be usual. But we would advise you of any such additional charge beforehand.
ADDITIONAL CHARGES
You should note that an additional, separate, time charge (and if applicable office supplies charges) will apply for any additional work requested and/or documentation drawn and/or considered.
GENERAL
Generally, though, ask us for a quotation and we will email you a comprehensive pack of explanatory material and the costs numbers.
TIMESCALES
Timescales for the period between our instruction and exchange of contracts on a residential property transaction can vary enormously. A cash purchase and sale could get to exchange of contracts within a week. A purchase and sale of a complicated residential estate might take many months. Purchase and sale of a new-build property from a developer might take weeks or months, with a longer elapse of time if, for example, it turns out that the developer does not actually own parts of the title which it is looking to sell.
A date for completion is only fixed at the point when it is inserted into the contract which is then exchanged. The period between exchange of contracts and completion can be agreed to be any period, from a simultaneous exchange and completion to a completion on notice (when the property is built-complete) In for example a year’s time.
Timescales depend on the time needed to remediate deficiencies, defects, unclarities and mistakes in the title documentation for the property to be bought or sold, and on the availability of mortgage finance, and on the stipulations of mortgage lenders.
