You’ll need a solicitor (or licensed conveyancer) to process your property purchase or sale. Ideally they should be accredited by one of the recognised professional bodies (SRA, CLC, LSNI) for added protection.
How much is solicitors fees?
The role of a conveyancer is to ensure that the legal ownership of a property and the land it sits on gets transferred correctly between you and the previous owner – whether you’re buying or selling. This is a complicated process that involves a lot of paperwork and legal negotiations.
Depending on the type of properte conveyancing services you’re buying, your conveyancer will need to carry out a number of searches on your behalf. These are enquiries made to various local authorities that hold information about the property and the land it sits on or factors that may directly (or indirectly) affect it. Examples of searches include; Local Authority search – which investigates things like conservation areas, tree preservation orders, listed buildings designations, planning control history, nearby road schemes and motorways and contaminated land.
Some firms add on extra charges to their basic conveyancing fee called disbursements. They will call these ‘potential additional disbursements’ and hide them away in the small print, turning what initially looked like a cheap conveyancing quote into something much more expensive. It’s important to scour the fine print and always compare quotes, especially between conveyancers that offer a ‘no move no fees’ arrangement. Transparent conveyancing firms will have a very short list of fair and reasonable extra charges that should simply make up part of their basic conveyancing fee.