Solicitors fees for buying a house vary tremendously, depending on the type of property you are buying and the conveyancing solicitor you are using. If you use conveyancing solicitors recommended by your estate agent, mortgage provider or independent financial adviser, a portion of the money you pay may go towards a ‘referral fee’ to the people who recommended them to you. This obviously increases the cost to you, so finding and instructing your own solicitor is the first step to saving money.
What should you budget for solicitors conveyancing fees when you’re buying a house in the UK?
What Services Conveyancing Solicitors Perform For Their Fees When You Buy A House
According to recent surveys, the average cost of solicitors fees for buying a house are around £850, with a typical range of between £500 and £1,500. This does not include VAT, which will add a further 20%. Nor does it include other monies you will need to pay out through your conveyancing solicitors for expenses such as and Land Registry fees, bank transfer fees, water and environmental local searches and other similar charges. These are often called disbursements.
The same reports noted above estimate that these costs will add around £450 to your solicitor’s bill. Therefore, the average total solicitors fees for house buying are around £1,300 for a freehold property and £1,550 for a leasehold property. The disbursements part of the total fees should be roughly similar between solicitors, because they involve paying standard set fees, mainly to government departments.
Even without these disbursements, the house buying solicitors fees seem to constitute a large amount of money, so what services are you getting for that outlay? Remember that buying a house in the UK involves a legal process; and any mistakes made can have costly repercussions. It’s vital, then, that it is done correctly. Solicitor fees for selling a house or buying a house cover a lot of work that happens in the background. To give you an idea of what’s involved, here’s a brief guide to what a solicitor will do on your behalf.
From when you instruct your solicitor to the ‘exchange of contracts’ stage, your solicitor will need to complete certain tasks.
Use Conveyancing Comparison Sites For A Range Of Solicitor Quotes For Buying A House
First, they’ll acquire a copy of the contract pack from the seller’s solicitor. Then, they carry out local authority searches and get a copy of your mortgage offer. They will discuss these three things with you, explaining anything you are not sure about. After this, they negotiate a proposed completion date and inform the seller’s solicitor when you are happy to proceed.
The next step is to swap contracts with the solicitor completing conveyancing for the seller (known as the exchange of contracts); and pay your deposit. At this point, you can begin to relax, as it looks more certain that you’ll be moving to your new house! However, there are solicitors house buying fees for a few further tasks. Your solicitor will produce a completion statement and complete pre-completion searches. They will arrange for any mortgage money to be released from your mortgage lender and use this to pay the seller for the house.
Finally, they will receive the relevant documentation, including the title deeds, transfer deeds and proof that the seller has paid off their mortgage. Now, you have completed and can move in on the agreed date. Your solicitor finishes the transaction by sending the transfer deeds and stamp duty (if applicable) to the Stamping Office and registering you as the new owner with the Land Registry. Then they will send the new title deeds to your mortgage company.
All this may sound prohibitively expensive, but to significantly reduce your solicitor’s fees, why not use a conveyancing comparison site such as Conveyancing Index?
Here you can get a range of competitive solicitor quotes for buying a house.
Conveyancing Index Offers Fast, Reliable Quotes For Solicitors Fees For Buying A House
By using our conveyancing comparison website at https://www.conveyancingindex.co.uk, you can compare solicitors fees for buying a house instantly from the best local property solicitors.
At Conveyancing Index, we carefully select our partner conveyancing solicitors based on criteria such as reliability and professionalism, speed of service, effective communication, excellent customer service and value for money. The effectiveness of this ‘hand-picking’ process is evidenced in our excellent reviews on independent websites.
Our conveyancing experts can effectively deal with your UK property purchase at a great price.
If you have any UK property conveyancing queries, please ring 0203 874 2020 to speak to one of our advisers.