Buying and selling a house is an expensive time for most people. Budgets are tight and alongside the obvious expenses such as mortgages and financial products, plus structural surveys and removal fees, it is important to save some money to furnish your new home and add all those little touches that make a house a home. Therefore, it is important to ensure that there are as little hidden costs as possible. In this article, we answer the question, can I get a fixed-fee quote from solicitors for selling my house?
The short answer is yes. If you ask the right questions and ensure you do your research, you can get a fixed-fee quote from solicitors for selling your house.
Some Law Firms offer fixed-fee quotes upfront and will advertise offering fixed-fees in their quotation. It is however important you check for any small print of additional fees to expect. It is also important to ensure you disclose everything at the point of quoting.
Can I get a fixed-fee quote from solicitors for selling my house – Factors that can affect your quote?
There are a number of factors that can affect your quote:
- Property Tenure – Is the property a freehold, leasehold or share of freehold? When someone buys a freehold property (usually a house), they are purchasing the full property and any land the property sits on, all responsibility for the property falls on the property owner. Whilst there may have covenants and different rights and easements, it is often a more simple and therefore less costly process from a legal and technical point of view. With a leasehold or share of freehold, there is more work for a solicitor to carry out in establishing common parts, rights and responsibilities over these, the additional restrictive covenants that often come with a lease and also management company arrangements including block insurance, service charge and ground rent, plus planned works to the property. In turn the solicitor acting for the seller has more work to do in answering these enquiries.
- Financing – Redeeming mortgage charges on properties and ensuring their legal charge over the property is discharged creates more work for a solicitor than where a property is owned outright. Second charges and things such as Help to Buy Equity Loans also add additional work to the sale process and therefore add fees to a quote.
- Identity and Anti-Money Laundering Checks – Solicitors and conveyancers are regulated and therefore there is a legal requirement for them to satisfy a number of checks in regards ID and AML where a client is concerned before they can proceed with a transaction. Different approved organisations are used for this purpose which all carry a fee that passes to a client.
- Land Registry Fees – There are disbursements which must be paid to the Land Registry for the production of documents required by your buyer within the draft contract and in response to enquiries.
In conclusion, the answer to the question is yes, you can get a fixed fee quotation from solicitors for selling your house but you need to ask the question and be sure of what you are being quoted before committing to a particular Firm.
At Express Conveyancing, we work hard to ensure transparency on fees and so we do offer fixed fee quotations to our clients. We ensure we speak with all clients and ask all the important question to make sure everything that needs to be included is done so in the initial quotation before a client commits. We do appreciate that things happen outside of the control of either the client or solicitor and so ensure we are fully transparent in cases such as this also. If you would like to obtain a quote, please contact one of our team on 0800 799 9892 or hello@express-conveyancing.co.uk
