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Residential Conveyancing Fees
As part of our commitment to transparent pricing, all standard residential conveyancing costs will be clearly laid out at the point of instruction.
Below are some examples of the additional costs and disbursements that may need to be applied to your fee when buying or selling a property.
Stamp Duty Land Tax
Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) may be payable when you purchase a property, extend a lease or transfer a property to someone else.
Click on the link below to access the HMRC’s SDLT calculator to find out how much Stamp Duty you’re likely to incur.
Stamp Duty Calculator
Leasehold Purchases
With a leasehold purchase, various fees will be payable to the landlord or management company following completion. These costs may be related to: Deed of Covenant, Notice of Assignment and Charge, Compliance Certificate and Company Membership fee. We will confirm these costs with you as soon as we receive the relevant information.
Indemnity Insurance
If it transpires that you require an indemnity insurance policy – because of a missing deed, for example – we will advise you of the cost of this policy as early on as possible in the conveyancing process.
Purchases
Exchange of Contracts:
4 to 6 weeks approximately from receipt of draft contract papers.
Completion:
Can be simultaneous with exchange of contracts or a week to 4 weeks after exchange. In some cases, the parties may agree on a longer period between exchange and completion.
Post completion formalities:
These are concluded within 30 days which includes filing the SDLT Return at HMRC, payment of SDLT, lodging the application to register the new ownership at Land Registry and dealing with any other post completion formalities, e.g., serving notices etc on the Landlord / Management Company for a leasehold property.
(For a new build property, the time scales will depend on the terms of the contact and the anticipated completion date of the construction of the property itself. Exchange of contracts is usually required to take place within 4 to 6 weeks of receipt of draft contract papers with a ‘long stop date’ being agreed by which completion of the purchase must take place).
Who’ll be dealing with your matter?
Our Property Team consists of Partners, Solicitors, a Trainee Solicitor and Paralegals. Your matter will be dealt with by a Partner, Solicitor or Trainee Solicitor who will be assisted by our Paralegals. Please go to Our Team page for details of the members of our Property Department.
In residential conveyancing and in some other cases we can agree a fixed fee for the whole case or certain stages in a case. We will be able to give you an indication as to whether your case is suitable for a fixed fee after an initial consultation
We are obliged to provide you with detailed information in relation to costs for work undertaken in certain areas of law. Please click on the links below and feel free to contact us should you have any queries.
Leasehold Sales
For a leasehold sale, your landlord or management company will charge a fee to issue a ‘leasehold pack’. We will advise you of these costs once as soon as they are confirmed.
Leasehold Transfer of Equity or Remortgage
A notice of Charge or Assignment is likely to need to be served on the landlord or management company following completion where there has been a transfer of equity or a remortgage. A Deed of Covenant may also need to be entered into where there has been a transfer of equity.
Timescales
We will always do our best to work to your particular time frame, but this is dependent on the circumstances of your conveyancing transaction. The time frame of a conveyancing matter is extremely difficult to predict.
You should allow between 6 to 8 weeks for a sale or purchase to proceed to completion when there is no chain involved. This timescale applies from the date of receipt of the draft contract papers for a purchase and the issuing of the draft contract papers for a sale. If there is a chain involved, you should perhaps add an additional 2 to 3 weeks to that time frame for each property in the chain on either side of you. We have broken down the sale and purchase timescales below.
A remortgage or transfer of equity transaction should take less time and we would estimate 4 weeks.
Sales
Exchange of Contracts:
4 to 6 weeks approximately from receipt of draft contract papers.
Completion:
Can be simultaneous with exchange of contracts or a week to 4 weeks after exchange. In some cases, the parties may agree on a longer period between exchange and completion.
Post completion formalities:
On completion any mortgage(s) registered against the property will be redeemed, agent’s invoice will be settled, and any sale proceeds are sent to clients on the day of completion or the following working day.
Download our Conveyancing Fees