RESIDENTIAL SHARED OWNERSHIP PURCHASE (NEW BUILD LEASEHOLD): OUR LEGAL COSTS: ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE 

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 shared ownership new build purchase transaction our time charges would be a fixed charge in the range of £795.00 + VAT to £1,245.00 + VAT (VAT charged at rates current from time to time as per https://www.gov.uk/vat-rates ).

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.

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 3^rd 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.

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.

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 possible charges and expenses on a straightforward shared ownership (new build) leasehold PURCHASE at £150,000:

 £96,250 for a 25% share (full market value of property £385,000) 

ITEM	HUMPHREYS & CO. APPROACH: NO EXTRAS		ANOTHER APPROACH: EXTRA ADD-ONS
Time charges	Charges	VAT	Charges	VAT
Time charges	£795.00	£159.00	£525.00	£105.00
Office supplies charges	£95.40	£19.08	£0.00	£0.00
Bank-to-bank transfer charge	£35.00	£7.00	£30.00	£6.00
Total (including VAT)	£1,110.48		£666.00
Expenses
SDLT* (varies with rent & lease length)	£0.00 (including on rental element at say £4,000 per year)		£0.00 (including on rental element at say £4,000 per year)
Land Registry registration fee	£80.00		£120.00
Complete set of searches	£158.91		£350.00
Bankruptcy search fee (per person)	£2.00 (per person)		£4.00
Land Registry search fee	£3.00		£4.00
Total	£243.91 (SDLT* element varies)		£478.00 (SDLT* element varies)
Time charge extras (most transactions)
ID verification	£10.00	£2.00	£15.00	£3.00
Submission of SDLT return	£0.00	£0.00	£95.00	£19.00
Acting for lender	£0.00	£0.00	£295.00	£59.00
Completion within 2 weeks of exchange of contracts	£0.00	£0.00	£95.00	£19.00
Leasehold supplement	£0.00	£0.00	£100.00	£20.00
Shared ownership supplement	£0.00	£0.00	£100.00	£20.00
New build supplement	£0.00	£0.00	£150.00	£30.00
Total (including VAT)	£0.00		£1,020.00
Total costs all-in for routine transaction (most cases)	£1,366.39 (of which 0.00 attributable to SDLT*)		£1,950.50 (of which 0.00 attributable to SDLT*)
Time charge extras (occasional transactions)
Dealing with licence to assign or deed of covenant	£0.00	£0.00	£125.00	£25.00
Dealing with an adult occupier	£0.00	£0.00	£60.00	£12.00
Dealing with a gifted deposit	£90.00	£18.00	£120.00	£24.00
Simultaneous exchange and completion (£175 plus VAT but £95 plus VAT of which shown above)	£0.00	£0.00	£80.00	£16.00
Total add-ons in occasional transactions (including VAT)	£108.00***		£462.00

Notes 

• Humphreys & Co. request an initial on-account payment of £265.00 (applied against totals above i.e. not extra).
• Humphreys & Co. offers its clients “no-move-no-fee” terms, meaning that if the transaction does not reach completion you will only be invoiced for any expenses already incurred at the time you decide not to proceed. 

VAT is payable at rates current from time to time as per https://www.gov.uk/vat-rates.