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Fill in this form and a member of our residential conveyancing team will give you a callJon Stones - Director
Call our friendly team now
on 01472 358686
Lines open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm
Fill in this form and a member of our residential conveyancing team will give you a callJon Stones - Director
Conveyancing is the legal process of transferring property ownership from one party to another. It involves a wide range of activities, including negotiating contracts, preparing transfer documents and registrations, conducting searches and inquiries into the title of land, as well as providing advice on matters associated with the transaction. The conveyancing process can be complex and time-consuming, so it's important to seek professional legal advice before proceeding with any property transaction. Our instant quote calculator takes some information on your house sale/purchase and uses this to calculate the fees involved.
The cost of conveyancing can vary depending on a few factors, including the property location, the number of parties involved in the transaction, and the complexity of any additional legal work that may be required. Additional costs may include out-of-pocket expenses such as search fees and stamp duty. If your property is subject to restrictive covenants or leasehold obligations, it is likely you'll have to pay additional legal fees for advice on these matters. In addition, it's important to factor in solicitor's professional indemnity insurance and compensation scheme fees that are normally included in the total fee.
Residential conveyancing is the work associated in buying and selling property. The fees quoted are to deal with standard residential transactions. We will be responsible to deal with the contract , enquiries, searches, mortgages, exchanging contracts to create a binding agreement and completion on the agreed date. As well as attending to the registration of properties and any mortgage with the Land Registry after completion. Reporting to you with a copy of the registered title on a purchase as evidence of the property being registered in your name.
Residential Conveyancing costs charged by this firm are dependant on a number of factors. Below are quotes given in a number of common transactions to assist you with your budgeting. Our fees increase based on the value of the transaction to reflect the additional risk we have as your professional advisor if something we are responsible for goes wrong.
Example quote for the purchase of freehold house at £150,000 with a mortgage
| Our Costs VAT | £725.00 £145.00 |
| Our Costs – Same Day Transfer Fee VAT | £20.00 £4.00 |
Or Searches (Nationwide) | £150.00 |
| Land Registry Priority Search Fee | £3.00 |
| Land Registry Bankruptcy Search Fee per person | £2.00 |
| Land Registry Registration Fee | £95.00 |
| ID Search per person | £2.04 |
| SDLT / LTT | TBC |
Quote purchase of a leasehold flat at £300,000 – funded by cash
| Our Costs VAT | £875.00 £175.00 |
| Our Costs – Same Day Transfer Fee VAT | £20.00 £4.00 |
Searches (Nationwide) | £150.00 |
| Land Registry Priority Search Fee | £3.00 |
| Land Registry Bankruptcy Search Fee per person | £2.00 |
| ID Search per person | £2.04 |
| Land Registry Registration Fee | £1355.00 |
| Notice of Assignment fee | TBC |
| Service Charge/Ground Rent Apportionment | TBC |
| SDLT / LTT | TBC |
Quote sale of a freehold house at £120,000 repaying a mortgage
| Our Costs VAT | £725.00 £145.00 |
| Our Costs – Same Day Transfer Fee VAT | £20.00 £4.00 |
| Land Registry Official Copy Entries | £6.00 |
| Land Registry Bankruptcy Search Fee per person | £2.00 |
| ID Search per person | £2.04 |
Quote sale of a leasehold flat at £350,000
| Our Costs VAT | £750.00 £150.00 |
| Our Costs – Same Day Transfer Fee VAT | £20.00 £4.00 |
| Land Registry Official Copy Entries (Freehold) | £6.00 |
| Land Registry Official Copy Entries (Leasehold) | £6.00 |
| Land Registry Copy Lease | £3.00 |
| Land Registry Bankruptcy Search Fee per person | £2.00 |
| ID Search per person | £2.04 |
Our total costs will be based upon a total of the above charges
We have a tariff of fixed charges for residential work. These costs vary if you are buying or selling a property. There is extra work when acting in the sale or purchase of Leasehold properties and we charge a supplement of £150 plus VAT. We make a charge of £20 plus VAT to make same day transfers of funds. These transfers are often required on the day the house is bought or sold (completion) to transfer money to your seller’s solicitor or to redeem mortgages.
With residential sales details of the transaction are initially supplied to us. This can be directly by you our client, or could be by an estate agent acting in the matter contacting us with a memorandum of sale. This is a document that supplies details on the property, seller, buyer, price being paid, details of any things being sold with the property such as carpets and curtains (as well as any price agreed to be paid for these), with details of the finance arrangements (if the purchase if funded by cash or by means of a mortgage). With this information an initial letter is sent to you the client detailing the terms of our retainer. This will set out our costs in a fixed price, subject to the information you have supplied. We do reserve the right to charge more if additional issues are identified. Any extra work is prices to you and agreed before committing you. This could include work to correct a defect in your registered title. We will agree additional payments if you require us to complete work in a very quick period of less than 3 weeks. A supplement of £200 plus VAT is charged for this. If we are required to arrange indemnity insurance to cover a defect of title and/or supply a statement of truth with the property we reserve the right to charge extra for the time spent (when we supply the initial quote we will not have seen any information about the property to know if there is likely to be an issue explaining why this may be an additional cost). If there is more than 1 mortgage to redeem we will charge additional fees for our work and additional costs for the work associated arranging another bank transfer.
When buying a property we will be required to carry out searches to assist in advising you about any potential issues affecting the property to help you decide if you want to proceed.
Some parts of the country have additional risks that we search for which will often require an additional disbursement to be paid to obtain this search. If the property you are buying is near a coalfield – an area where coal was mines, we will carry out a coal search so we can see if there has been any historic subsidence due to the mines below the ground.
There are to look at the Local Authority’s registers, consider environmental issues, chancel search enquiries (if deemed necessary) as well as water and drainage searches. Enquiries are also made to the Land Registry to consider if parties are bankrupt and also to lock the property register down to allow no changes to be made whilst your interest in the property is registered at the Land Registry. It costs £2 to do a bankruptcy search and £3 to carry out a Land Registry search with priority. If there is a mortgage we are required when acting for the lender to provide our opinion if we are happy that the property meets the lender’s lending criteria – this work is included in our charges.
Sometimes when we act in the sale of the property it may be identified that there is potential to obtain a more valuable planning consent. So the house with the large grounds could have a planning consent to develop the garden into a block of flats. A building plot for a block of flats is more valuable than garden land and subject to the house not being devalued too much by such a scheme in this example the total site would be worth more. If you are selling the site as just a house and garden however you may want to reserve the right to have an interest in the uplift in value of the property. In such cases we will mention overage. This is an agreement with the buyer of the property (and potentially future buyers for a fixed period) that if they re-develop the site – building the flats as per the above example with a planning consent, you would receive an additional payment. This is not within our standard service the work to do this. Our fees start from a minimum of £500 plus VAT based on the likely value of the uplift at a rate of 0.4%.
Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is a government tax you are responsible to pay on completion of purchases of certain values. The government has a SDLT calculator that will help you confirm this cost and we suggest your review this. Our fees include the service of paying SDLT that you confirm you wish to be paid. SDLT is a very complex tax and our contract to supply services to you limits the extent o our advice. In complex matters you may want to seek the advice of an accountant which will create an additional cost for yourself.
https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/calculate-stamp-duty-land-tax/#/intro
The Land registry charges fees based on the specific transaction you are carry out and we suggest you review this. Our fees include the service of registration of your property with the cost of doing this with the Land Registry detailed in the attached on-line fee calculator.
Please note that we are able to assist in purchasing property in Wales. Rather than SDLT being paid, the Welsh Revenue Authority collects Land Transaction Tax (“LTT”). There is a separate calculator to calculate this tax and it substitutes SDLT for property in those areas. To calculate the correct level of LTT payable please consult the following website.
John Barkers Solicitors Limited finds in very few situations that they are instructed that matters do not proceed for whatever reason. This maybe is for a matter outside of your control or could be due to your choice. We reserve the right to charge aborted transaction fees. These are £300 plus VAT on any matter we are dealing with, so where we are acting in both a sale and a purchase this could be £600 plus VAT. If you are concerned about the risk of this you may wish to agree with your agent that they make a contribution of cost in the event that matters do not proceed due to no fault of your own. Insurance maybe available to cover this risk and it is for you to investigate if you feel this is a risk you wish to protect or mitigate. In a future transaction where we are able to re-use work we may where appropriate be able to suggest a lower fee for our services – this will be separately discussed as a variation of the original retainer if appropriate.
We expect on a sale a payment of £200 to be made at the start of the matter. If the property is not in negative equity we will deduct the balance of charges from the sale proceeds.
We expect on a purchase matter a payment of £300 to be made at the start of the matter. To complete the matter we will require all funds due to be paid as will be detailed on a completion statement. Funds will have to be cleared before work can commence a transfer from your bank by means of same day transfer is the best way often to guarantee this.
With a residential sale it can take from 4 to 8 weeks to sell a property. For a residential purchase it tends to take a little longer, possibly, 6 to 10 weeks.
If the property is part of a chain of transactions the national average is approximately 12 weeks.
Jonathan Colin Stones is our head of department and is a qualified solicitor of over 13 years post qualification experience. He is also a Director of John Barkers Solicitors Limited being the Senior Responsible Officer for the Conveyancing Quality Mark and also the Compliance Officer for Finance and Administration. Other staff do conduct conveyancing work under his supervision and their experience and any qualifications are noted.
If you require this information to supplied in written hardcopy please request a copy to be made and supplied to yourself.
The information supplied here is a guide only to assist with initial budgeting and to comply with the requirements of our professional body. For a contractually binding quote between yourself and our company you will need to contact us to discuss. This is a service we provide for free and will give you a quote tailored to your exact requirements.
Please note that John Barkers Solicitors Limited does have referral arrangements with some estate agents that recommend out services. Payments from £50 plus VAT are paid for administrative support in making these referrals, we treat them as part of our marketing budget to make you aware of what services we do at a key point when you are deciding how to proceed with your sale and/or purchase. Where such a payment is made it will be detailed in our letter of engagement to you. The payment comes out of the money we have agreed to be paid for the service.
John Barkers Solicitors Ltd the friendly professional supporting you with your conveyancing requirements. Please call now for your no obligation conveyancing fee quote.
Call our friendly team now
on 01472 358686
Lines open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm
