Terms and Conditions

Unlike some conveyancers our quote includes all the following costs and expenses:

• Included emails, postage, letters in or out, faxing, scanning, photocopying or text updates.
• Included indemnity insurance contributions. We have cover for £10,000,000 (£8,000,000 above the minimum cover provided by most solicitors)
• Included storage costs of your file or deeds for free following completion
• Included discharge of your first mortgage on your sale
• Included expedition fee – we do not charge if a short period (less than two weeks) is required between exchange and completion.

Our quotes includes  :

• Electronic bank transfer fees – these are charged at £30.00 plus VAT each and they will be required for the discharge of each mortgage on the property if you are selling and one transfer will be required on completion of the purchase. This charge covers both our time spent setting up and effecting the transfer and any bank charges.
• Stamp Duty Land Tax – The rates quoted are current however they can change annually with the Budget.
• Search Fees – the fee quoted is an estimate of the local, drainage and environmental search in your area. If you put in a postcode in the search system this will produce a more accurate quote for you.  The actual cost may vary up or down as providers of searches do change their pricing from time to time.

Naturally some limitations apply to our fixed fee service and some transactions may attract additional fees, disbursements or third party charges and the main examples of these are given below. We can assure you that where third party charges are made we will pass the cost on as charged without any mark-up.

We do not impose additional fees or charges without your consent. If we believe that a matter falls outside the scope of our initial instructions (for example if upon receipt of draft documents we discover the matter is not standard) we will inform you of the difficulty and any additional charge. If this cannot be agreed with you we will stop acting.

• Second Mortgages – If we are required to act in relation to a second mortgage on your purchase or to discharge additional loans or mortgages on a sale (the discharge of your first mortgage is included in our charge) there is a minimum fee of £100 plus VAT per additional mortgage. Similar charges will apply to the removal of cautions and or restrictions.
• Trust Deeds – if you require a trust deed to be drawn up because for example you wish to hold the property in unequal shares, the costs for this starts at £195 plus VAT but this includes storage of the original documents.
• Acting for Companies – Companies automatically pay the additional 3% charge for stamp duty on residential property. If the purchase involves a company with finance/mortgage then a charge of £19.80 will be made for registering the mortgage at Companies House and we need to do a pre-completion insolvency search of £15.00. Quite often buy to let company purchases with finance will involve personal guarantees, where we are asked to advise on those guarantees a further minimum charge of £250 plus VAT will apply.

You will normally pay the legal costs and the rest of the payments when your purchase/sale is completed.

When you instruct us on a purchase, we will collect a small payment of around £300 to cover immediate costs such as searches.

When you instruct us on a sale we will not usually require any payment on account unless you are selling a leasehold property where we need to obtain the “leasehold information pack”

All payments on account will be deducted from your total bill.

We will also send you statements as the matter progresses so you can keep track of the financial side.

• Additional title documents from Land Registry – if we need to obtain additional documents from the Land Registry they will charge according to their current scale fee – the fee per extra document /title is £3.
• Missing Planning or Building Regulations Documents– if you do not have all the planning or building regulations history for your property we may need to obtain copies from the local authority for which they make a copying charge. This is normally only £10-20.
• Leasehold Property – If you are purchasing or selling a leasehold property you may have to pay in addition to the above various administration charges to the Landlord or Managing Agents for the production of the “leasehold information pack” detailing the service & management charges, ground rent and the structure and requirements of the landlord/management company regarding the sale of the property. There is no way that we can exactly determine or control this charge (budget for £100-300).
• New Build – If you are purchasing your property from a builder you may also have to pay a contribution to their solicitor’s costs for supplying the documentation. This normally in the region of £100-200 plus VAT.
• Additional Searches – On rare occasions (if the property is in a rural location or the geography of the area dictates) other specific searches may be required – for example coal or tin mining, clay ball searches.