As a few may have guessed from some recent forum posts, I've been looking to extend, buy and extend or move houses. Looks like I may have found the right deal to sell mine and buy another. New house is fine and does not require an extension. But, in the current recession, and the desire to get the house market moving, I'm gobsmacked by the associated costs to buy and sell a typical family home. Solicitor fees, searches, disbursements, money transfer charges, stamp duty, estate agent fee's, movers ..... Ohhhhh and most plus VAT. Need to allow about £6,500 to cover all of the above Sure someone will tell me it's all value for money, but, feels like a big chunk of money to me. Seems only thing I can negotiate on, and try to save some money, are the solicitor fee's, and the movers. At best, I can't try to reduce the overall bill by £3 to £400. Still leaves me with a bill for about £6k. Goverment should look to cut the VAT and stamp duty to assist the housing market .... And general public. Ok, rant over.
I know how you feel, recently bought first house and it was £4k for solicitors fees and stamp duty. Stamp duty alone was silly. Me and GF were really lucky but the government are really screwing people over with the duty. It's nigh on impossible getting a house unless you have help; putting down a huge deposit for a mortgage is hard enough without having pay for everything else.
Carbon749 I really get why your pissed. I've just signed a 10 year lease contract on a warehouse and had to hand over 40k in duty for the fooking privilege. It's day light robbery! Least dick turpin whore a mask. They wonder why the economy doesn't recover!
feel your pain, 6500 sounds reasonable compared to the prices in london where quater of a mill buys you a 1 bed shoe box so ineviatbely you spend over 3%! and to top it all i just had an estate agent tell me i should put a £1000 holding deposit down on place to show im serious to the seller!! feck me surely commitiing to pay a solictor £1000+ and a £600+ surveyor is demonstration enough!!
Admin fees! That and the bastard Building Societies "survey charges" which amount to some ole bint popping her head in around the door with a clip board!
My house is 6 year old, the house I'm buying is 3 year old. Both still covered by 10 builders cover, both have recent sales data for price when built, sale price etc So, what will a building society "survey" cover that could not be done in 10 mins online ???? Put the house on the market with 2 agents from day 1, and set them against each other when negotiating fee's etc managed to get 1% fee's. I played them off against each other to get free premium listing on right move, I played them off about who had got me the most interest, viewings etc this kept them both on their toe's, and ensured they did not get complacent about finding a buyer. What has pissed me off, is that the quoted solicitor fee's are £495 + VAT to buy my new house. Ok, lots of searches to do etc so, I can understand the fee, even if I think it's high. But, the same solicitor wants to charge the same fee, £495 + VAT to sell my current house. Surely there is much less workload in selling my house, so, why the same fee's to sell and buy? Also, before they quote solicitor fee's, they ask the value of the sale and purchase. Leads me to think that the fee's are linked to the value of the house ie: if you can afford an expensive house, you can afford higher solicitor fee's. Is there any more work sorting out the sale of an £80k terraced house compared to a £220K detached house ???? I guess the workload is the same, so the fee's should be the same. I will be getting these fee's down.
oddly there is prob more work on the terrace as you have party walls etc to consider which is less of an issue with detatched houses
I used an online solicitor a few years ago, and paid about the same. That's my target. Just pissed off that I cant do much more to reduce the overall bill, as many of he disbursements an charges are fixed fees that I can't do anything about.
Do yr searches first! No point finding out yr potential purchase is on a flood plain toward the end of the process! :redface:
Troy, excuse me asking but why did you pay £40k in duty on a lease? I have an import/export business and currently rent a warehouse in Bedfordshire and we dont pay any duty, never have. You may have paid vat on a premium or on the rent itself but I imagine you are vat registered so it will come off your next quaterly bill. Sorry if I sound like an accountant, I`m not, but I cant see why you have paid out £40k. Of course your business may be totally different to mine and have differenr regs?
If the solicitor ballses up the conveyance causing you a major loss, and you have to make a claim in negligence to recover that loss, this will be covered by the solicitor's professional insurance (which they must have, compulsorily). That cover is one of the things you are paying for, and the larger the transaction the greater the risk and the more more it costs to cover it. Also, the main thing you are paying for is the years spent studying law and qualifying as a solicitor, before he/she is allowed to start practising, as well as continuing study afterwards. The actual work done in terms of hours and minutes is only part of it. In my view it is the estate agents' fees which are a rip-off, and the solicitors fees are fairly reasonable. Concerning stamp duty (i.e. the transaction tax on property sales), from the Treasury's point of view as a tax it has three huge advantages. First, it does not bear on the very poor - only people sufficiently well-off to be buying and selling property have to pay it. Second, it is self-enforcing - if buyers didn't pay the duty, the transaction would be invalid and the buyer would not get good title to the property. This makes it very cheap to collect, compared to income tax, council tax, VAT, etc. Third, whenever property prices go up and the owners get a windfall gain, a slice of the windfall goes to the government automatically, without the need for a special additional tax. These points make stamp duty irresistably tempting to every Chancellor of the Exchequer, past present and no doubt future.
Don't even get me on to the fees the robbing front bottom maint companies want for your records if yr selling a lease hold property...
dukesox. Its called STDL Payment and its a fee paid to land registry. The lease is for 10 years on a 134,000sqr/ft warehouse. The bloody rates alone are 250k per annum . Do you only deal in duty paid goods or is your warehouse bonded?
I put my place up for £450+.....agents wanted £9,900 including VAT, I got them down to £7,500. Their own solicitors wanted £1,300 including VAT and 'disbursments' (IE ID check costs etc).....(their solicitors are supposed to worka 7 day week etc etc etc) but I have cancelled them as 1) I can visit my own solicitor if necessary; 2) He understands the property (he acted when I bought it); 3) He will charge me at least £300 less than the others will. So if I finally sell the place (not much sign if that at the moment) it will cost say, £9000....I'm happy with that, if it sells. AL.
I`ve not heard of that STDL payment before. All our goods are customs cleared before they arrive here or at our customers premises . Is your place bonded and is the STDL down to that? My warehouse is much smaller than yours, about 30000 sqfeet and the rates are £36k pa. You get sod all for commercial rates though dont you, apart from streetlighting I cant think of anything the council provide that we use on a regular basis.
Tell me about it! You dont even get the bin emptied. The reason I had to pay the duty was down to the period of the lease and its actually SDLT (typed in wrong) Stamp Duty Land Tax. the only save in grace was that this could be deferred for 12 months for an additional fee of £200. The warehouse is bonded but getting that is another story with yet more cash outlay for sod all in return.
Shame about the typo, I like the idea of someone somewhere in government having a sense of humour and coming up with taxes based on STD`s ! We owned our previous warehouse in St albans but sold it at the top of the market and then moved to a similar sized but much cheaper rental one in lovely Luton although according to the locals the T in Luton is silent. No duty payable either but maybe it becomes payable above a certain threshold? We very occasionally need access to a bonded warehouse so I may get in touch next time. No offense if you are not interested.
