Conveyancing

What we do and what it costs

Residential Conveyancing

For more detailed information call us on 020 3633 4060

What do we do on a purchase?

Stamp Duty and Registry Fees

The biggest cost in most purchases is Stamp Duty. This is a tax on the price of the property and is paid to the Inland Revenue.

On freehold properties the Stamp Duty rates are:

Purchase Price of property
£0 - £125,000 0%
£125,001 - £250,000 2%
£250,001 - £925,000 5%
£925,001 - £1.5 million 10%

For Buy to Let/ Additional Home Rate (from April 2016) an additional 3% on every one of the above including properties under £125,000


Rates of Stamp Duty

For a detailed explanation directly from the Inland revenue Click Here www.gov.uk/stamp-duty-land-tax/residential-property-rates

The way stamp duty is calculated on leases is even more complicated. If you are buying an existing lease it's treated in the same way as a freehold property. That is the price paid is all that counts. However, if you are buying a new lease, Stamp Duty is based on the Price paid and on the rent payable under the lease. When we know the terms of the lease we will let you know what the Stamp Duty will be.

Leasehold Stamp Duty

In the meantime if you want more information on how it is calculated HMRC have a Stamp Duty calculator Click Here www.tax.service.gov.uk/calculate-stamp-duty-land-tax/#/intro

As you will see, Stamp Duty is a major expense. Despite that, fees are payable to other government departments as well. The Land Registry is the department which keeps records on who owns which properties. All changes of ownership and all mortgages have to be registered with the Land Registry or the transaction becomes invalid. The Land Registry fee varies depending on the price paid.

e.g. a property bought for £550,000 will incur a Land Registry fee of £270 .

For more detailed information on all Land Registry fees Click Here www.gov.uk/guidance/land-registry-registration-services-fees


Local Searches

When buying a property, one of the essential checks is to ask the local council if they have done or intend to do anything which might affect the property. For example, whether they have granted or refused any planning permissions or decided to build a major new road nearby. Experience has shown that there are certain questions which should normally be asked. These are set out in a detailed form call "a Local Search". This is sent to the Council which is responsible for the area which covers the property you are buying. Different councils take anything from a week to a month to reply to these and charge different fees. Some as little as £100, others as much as £280. As this is quite a big outlay we ask you to let us have a cheque to cover the likely cost. In most of London this is about £300 so that's the amount we request you send us. As soon as we receive that from you we send off the local search. To avoid delay later on we ask you to let us have a cheque for £300 payable to Sayer Moore & Co right at the beginning of the transaction. If the cost of the search is less, we will credit any balance towards your purchase. If it's more, we will ask you for the balance later on.


Survey

Buying a property is the biggest financial transaction of most peoples lives. It pays to play it safe and have the property thoroughly checked over by a surveyor. If no problems are found at least you can sleep easily. If any serious faults are discovered you can either renegotiate the price to cover the cost or withdraw from the deal. If there are serious faults and the surveyor misses them, you have some chance of claiming compensation.

What is the likely cost? All mortgage lenders will want a surveyor chosen by them to value the property and most will make you pay the valuer's fee. This varies from lender to lender and on the type and price of the property but will probably be between £150 and £250. Please check with your lender for precise costs. A basic valuation is designed to protect the lender NOT you. It's only intended to make sure their loan is reasonably safe.

Some lenders offer to allow their surveyor to do a report for you as well. They charge an extra fee for this, perhaps £300 to £400, but it is worth it to give you the protection you need. Remember though that even the best of surveys usually contain a large number of "get out clauses". Watch out for the surveyor saying he/she was unable to check the roof, couldn't take up the carpets to check the floor boards or didn't check the wiring, gas supply, heating or drainage. Some of these may be reasonable, too many of them and you may begin to wonder what you are getting for your money. If you believe the surveyor is acting unfairly in excluding too many responsibilities discuss it with him/her.

Occasionally you will be offered a full structural report. This is an extremely thorough report going into much more detail than a normal survey. It is really designed for properties where there is a high risk of a serious problem. Older, poorly maintained properties or ones of an unusual design. The cost of these can be high. £500+ but if you need it they are worth it.

Most lenders will let you use a surveyor of your own choice to carry out your survey and their valuation provided the surveyor is on a list of ones they are willing to use.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
For more information about surveyors and how to find one in your area
Click Here


Solicitors fees for buying or selling

We believe that the fairest way to work out our charge to you is to link it to the amount of time we spend on your case. If your case is simple and quickly dealt with, you pay less than if it is difficult and slow. This is very similar to the way you pay more for a long taxi journey than a short one.
We work out how much to charge for our time by adding up the cost of running our office for one full year. This includes the wages we pay to secretaries, bookkeepers, filing clerks and our support staff, the money we pay to our suppliers for equipment, stationery, electricity, business rates and all the other bills that come in. We then divide that amount by the number of hours our solicitors can reasonably be expected to work in a year, taking into account the normal holiday entitlement, sick leave and the time they to spend on administration, training & other similar requirements. This arrives at the amount each solicitor has to earn an hour to ensure we can pay our bills and stay in business. Finally, we add to that a profit margin of 15% from which the solicitors themselves are paid.

The current hourly charge works out to approximately £185.00. To simplify our sums, the Law Society allows us to assume that a basic letter received or sent or a telephone call received or made would take up about six minutes or one-tenth of an hour. This covers the cost of getting a file out, thinking about what needs to be done, making a note and, if necessary, dictating, typing a letter, checking, signing it and posting it.

We can't give a precise figure for our charges as each case can be different. Some run very smoothly and the clients are content to leave us to get on with things. Others run into all kinds of unexpected problems, usually due to one or more of the people in the "chain" having mislead their buyer or seller or having some unexpected personal problems. In addition, some clients like us to be in contact with them two or three times a day, every day. While we are willing to provide whatever service clients want, that does put the bill up considerably!

The best we can say is that a normal, straightforward purchase or sale would cost around £1,400 to £1,500 plus VAT...but life and human nature being what it is, cases are rarely completely normal and straightforward.

What we do promise is that we will provide a good, reliable professional service. We keep our clients informed about what we are doing and why. We treat every one of our clients as an individual and treat them with the respect and courtesy they deserve. We think that's real value for money.

Can these costs be reduced?

Our clients expect and deserve a good service. To provide this, we need staff and equipment, all of which costs money. We do try to keep the costs over which we have some influence under control and the main way of achieving this is to use our staff efficiently. We employ enough staff to provide a good service on an average day but some days are busier than others. For example, the beginning and end of the week are busier than midweek as is the end of the month. Periods just before Christmas, Easter and Bank Holidays are always particularly hectic. As a result, there are times when we and our staff are very busy and although we always try to deal with all work within 48 hours, occasionally this may not be possible. It might be a particularly busy time or another client's case may be at a crucial stage and need all of our concentration. On these occasions, please be patient. We could employ enough staff to deal with even the busiest days without stress but if we did, it would mean that on quiet days most of them would be sitting around with nothing to do. This would increase our overheads immensely and as a result, force us to increase our charge to you.

In order to be fair, everything is dealt with in the order it arrives. If your case is especially urgent and you want us to queue jump it, we will do so whenever possible. But please accept that this causes disruption to our system and means that another client's work is put back. We cannot do this too often and we will need to make an additional charge when we do. Therefore, please only request this in a real emergency.

Can I do anything to help keep my bill down?

Leave us to get on with your case as quietly as possible. We will be doing all that is necessary and we will report to you when something important or interesting happens. If you have any information to pass on to us or want to ask any questions, if possible please write us a short note or send us an e-mail. We can deal with those so much more speedily and easily than we can deal with a phone call. If you do need to phone us please be willing to talk to your solicitor's assistant. He or she are trained and experienced enough to answer most routine queries. If they cannot deal with your query personally they will discuss it with your solicitor and either the solicitor or their assistant will come back to you as soon as reasonably possible. If the solicitor knows what your question is it gives them a chance to find out the answer before they return your call. If you refuse to leave a message and insist upon the solicitor phoning you back to find out what your query is, it will slow down the transaction.

We normally deal with your case in a way which moves it forward reasonably quickly. However if you are in a rush and want us to chase the other parties involved and generally do what we can to speed matters up, we will do so. However, as you will appreciate this usually means spending more time on the case and may mean that the final bill will have to reflect this. We are very happy to do this for you where necessary but will not automatically do it unless you ask us to. Most cases have their own natural speed and if you allow the case to proceed at that rate, the costs are kept to a minimum.

We like to work with our clients as part of a team and find that clients are often able to do some of the routine work themselves and, indeed some prefer to do so whilst others like us to deal with every aspect of the case. What this means is that the share of work between yourselves and us is at your discretion and we will do as much as you want but the more you assist, the quicker and more economical the case will be. In the end, the ultimate thing which decides how much work we do for you and the cost involved is safety. As your professional advisers we have to do whatever is needed to safeguard your interests. We cannot cut corners.


What else?

In some purchases there are a few unexpected costs. Sometimes the seller's solicitors fail to supply us with all the information we need to safeguard you or satisfy your mortgage lender. If so, we will press them for that information but there may come a time when it seems prudent to go directly to the land registry, local council or freeholder to get it ourselves rather than risk slowing down the transaction unnecessarily. If we feel we have to make payments to any one else in order to get the information we need to allow your purchase to proceed we will let you know in advance and ask you to cover the cost. Let me stress…these will be payments demanded by other people or organisations not fees kept by us.