Posted by John on October 4, 2010 under Choosing a Solicitor | 
The typical move for a homeowner will involve conveyancing costs for both the sale of their old house and the purchase of their new one. And if their quotes are from a traditional high street conveyancing solicitor then, on average, they’ll pay almost twice what it would cost them if they went online.
Conveyancing survey
This surprising figure comes from a survey by the sell your house privately website YouMove.co.uk.[1] YouMove conducted an undercover survey of 52 randomly chosen high street solicitors and compared their quotes to those from YouMove’s own panel of online conveyancing solicitors.
Each solicitor was asked to provide a quote for an identical transaction involving the sale of one property and the purchase of another. The quotes were for average priced houses (since solicitors often base their fees partly on a property’s value).
Save £850 online
The result: the average cost (excluding search costs, which are fixed[2]) of a high street solicitor was £1745 compared to a cost of just £895 for online conveyancing. That’s a saving of £850 (48.7%).
With the number of residential property transactions likely to complete this year being around 900,000[3] that represents a potential overpayment by homeowners of £765 million.[4]
End of the “high street monopoly”
So why is going online so much cheaper? Quite simply the internet has thrown open the gates of competition. In the old days there was a virtual “high street monopoly”. Homeowners were forced to choose from a tiny handful of local firms all of whom charged similar (high) prices. Today conveyancing can be done from anywhere in the country and so competition – at least in the online sphere – has forced prices down.
According to John Tighe, the founder of YouMove and a lawyer himself, “consumers can now benefit from online access to firms specialising in conveyancing and who have much lower overheads, the benefit of which they pass on to their clients.” This makes them far cheaper than high street law firms who may only do a handful of conveyancing transactions and whose costs per solicitor work out far higher.
Beware online “law factories”
This is great news for consumers, but a word of warning: not all firms offering online conveyancing are equal. Some have been described as “law factories” – essentially no more than legal call centres where underpaid (and sometimes under qualified) staff are simply unable to give the kind of service you would expect because they are too busy.
Too busy, it turns out, because the firms they work for sucker in large numbers of clients by offering ridiculously cheap headline prices (£99 is not unheard of). Of course, these prices later turn out to be completely bogus. They don’t include any of the many “expenses” that such firms use to pad out their bills. Nor do they include search costs, registration fees or VAT.
The result is overworked and unhappy staff and frustrated customers who end up with a final bill that is many hundreds of pounds more than they expected and for a second rate service.
The 4 steps to choosing a conveyancing solicior without getting “ripped off”
So is it possible to benefit from the much cheaper online competition without getting caught out by an online “law factory”? The answer, according to John, is to look for an online firm that meets these four criteria:
1. Find a “conveyancing specialist”
Your solicitor should have an established reputation and specialise (or have a department specialising in) conveyancing.
2. Get a “fixed fee” quote
Never hire a solicitor on a per hour basis. This is how costs skyrocket. And don’t accept a quote that is fixed fee providing that there are no “unforeseen complications”. Such a promise is not worth the paper it’s written on: “fixed fee” should mean exactly that.
3. Get a “complete” quote
A fixed fee quote is no good unless it includes all costs. A favourite trick of dodgy firms (both online and high street) is to give low headline quotes to get your business and then add on lots of expensive hidden extras. Your quote should include all disbursements (expenses) plus VAT.
4. Get a “no completion – no fee” quote
As many as 1 in 3 property transactions fall through, meaning that one of the biggest unexpected costs when moving is additional legal fees.
To protect yourself against this find a solicitor who will work on a “no completion – no fee” basis. That way if you can’t complete you will be spared the legal fees (though you will still have to pay any expenses that have already been incurred on your behalf).
So, these are the four criteria for finding a good online conveyancing solicitor. All very well, but how can you be certain whether they’re in the good category of competitively priced conveyancing specialist or the bad category of cheap “law factory” without doing lots of exhaustive research?
Getting the right conveyancing firm
The simple answer is to find someone who’s already done the work for you. This is where YouMove’s panel of conveyancing solicitors comes in. All the solicitors on the panel meet the four criteria set out above. In addition they’ve all agreed to maintain a high level of customer service, all are members of the Law Society and all are regulated by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. They also guarantee that when you get a quote through YouMove it will be cheaper than if you approach the solicitors direct.
As an added reassurance, YouMove make unedited customer feedback on each firm available on their website – feedback that comes direct from clients and so can’t get filtered by the firms themselves. In fact, YouMove have already dropped two firms from their panel because the standard of customer feedback was not high enough.
If you want to find out more about how to choose a conveyancing solicitor YouMove have prepared a Free Report entitled: The 4 Steps to Choosing a Solicitor (so you don’t get “ripped off”). You can also click here for instant conveyancing quotes.
1 Survey of 52 high street solicitors for sale and purchase of identical properties (conducted September 2010).
2 The figures exclude the cost of the following searches: Local Authority; Water and Drainage; and Environmental. The cost of these searches is fixed for any given property since they are set by the local authority and the local water company. Typically, the cost of these searches adds up to around £200.
3 HMRC website
4 900,000 x £850 = £765 million
Posted by John on February 25, 2010 under Choosing a Solicitor |
Conveyancing solicitors have been having a hard time during the recession. According to the Law Society Gazette the number of unemployed solicitors is up over 400 per cent since the start of the credit crunch. Just a few months ago 7,000 solicitors were made redundant in one go when two leading mortgage providers decided that conveyancing services would no longer be provided in house.
So what does this mean for you if you’re looking for a conveyancing solicitor for your house sale or purchase? Well it’s pretty great news, that’s what!
In real terms, hiring a conveyancing solicitor has never been cheaper than it is today for two reasons:
1) the recession has resulted in conveyancing solicitors chasing far fewer transactions – house sales are still running at less than a third of the number at the peak of the market; and
2) the internet has massively increased the level of competition amongst conveyancing solicitors and brought prices crashing down as a result. In the old days solicitors only had to compete against the other law firms in their town. Today, the legal work for a conveyancing transaction can be done from anywhere in the country.
Five years ago you might have paid £1500 for a transaction that today would cost you a fraction of that (Click here to get FREE, instant, no-obligation Conveyancing Quotes). So should you be looking in your local high street or online?
The advantage of an online solicitor is that you don’t have to visit the office. Everything can be done over the phone or by email. On the other hand, if you have a local solicitor and you need to hurry them along then it’s easier to chase them, because if you can’t get them on the phone you can always call by their office.
This may be important if getting your transaction through quickly is important. Solicitors are like everyone else – they will respond fastest to whichever client is applying the most pressure!
Our advice would be to use the internet to shop around for a range of quotes. These are provided for free and will usually be less than what you would be quoted on the high street. You can then use these quotes to negotiate down the quote from your local solicitor (who as we’ve already mentioned will be hurting from the recession and anxious to get your business).
If in the end there is not much to choose between your local solicitor and an online solicitor then your local solicitor is probably the best way forward. But if you can save yourself a worthwhile amount of money then don’t be afraid to choose the online option, because as we said above conveyancing can now be done from anywhere.
Many online conveyancing websites come with a no fee guarantee if the sale or purchase fails to complete. You should be aware that this only applies to professional fees and does not apply to the cost of any searches that have been done. High street solicitors don’t normally offer this, but you should ask for it anyway.
As a final piece of advice, insist on getting a fixed fee quote and make sure that expenses are included as these add up to quite a lot. Expenses are mostly known in advance so there’s no reason why your solicitor shouldn’t be able to provide them (note: they may refer to them as “disbursements” – they mean the same thing).
Most of the fees are payable on completion apart from some monies on account. This means that you pay a proportion of the overall fees upfront to cover some of the search costs, etc. Again, don’t be afraid to negotiate the size of the upfront fee. They need your business more than you need them!
Click here to get your FREE, instant, no-obligation Conveyancing Quotes.
Posted by John on December 14, 2009 under Choosing a Solicitor |
Hi – welcome to Conveyancing Solicitors dot info.
This post explains the 3 things to look for when choosing your Conveyancing Solicitor.
# 1
The first thing to look for when choosing your conveyancing solicitors is whether they offer a “No Completion No Fee” guarantee.
Poor legal work by solicitors is a key reason for sales falling through – and if the sale falls through they don’t get paid! L aw firms really like to get paid so this is a great incentive for them to do a good job!
(Most firms don’t offer this, so if a firm does it’s a sure sign they’re confindent in their ability to do a good job.)
# 2
The second thing to look for is a firm of solicitors that operate on a “Fixed Fee Quote” basis.
This is to make sure that you don’t end up facing a huge bill. However long your transaction takes you have the “peace of mind” of knowing exactly how much you’ll be paying at the end, with no hidden costs.
Remember, it doesn’t take many letters at £50 each for a big bill to mount up. Make sure you’ve capped your costs or you could end up paying hundreds more than you need to.
# 3
Watch out for online “law factories” offering cut price (and cut rate) conveyancing. You get what you pay for and having your legal work handled by underpaid paralegals working in a call centre is not the way to a speedy and successful transaction.
Instead, choose a firm that is either a specialist in conveyancing or has a specialist conveyancing department.
All of our recommended solicitors meet these 3 criteria:
Click here to to get your FREE, instant, no-obligation conveyancing quotes.
Posted by John on November 26, 2009 under Choosing a Solicitor |
Costs are down
The good news is that online competition has brought the cost of conveyancing solicitors down dramatically in recent years.
Five or ten years ago it was not unusual for conveyancing costs to be £1,500 or more. Today it’s possible to get both the buying and selling parts of your transaction completed for a fraction of that.
The internet means that you can now compare conveyancing solicitors online with the click of a mouse. You no longer have to rely on your local high street solicitor regardless of how much they charge.
But beware
But beware – even online conveyancing quotes can vary significantly, with some firms charging more than twice as much as others for identical transactions.
In other words, even searching online won’t help you save money if you get your quotes from the wrong place!
We’ve done the work for you
That’s where we come in. We’ve done the research for you and reviewed the UK’s top conveyancing solicitors.
The reason is simple. We want to provide our customers with great service and we know that our recommendations reflect directly on us. Therefore, we only recommend the best.
FREE conveyancing quotes
We provide up to four quotes from leading conveyancing firms. Click here for your FREE, instant, no-obligation conveyancing quotes.
Save £850 on conveyancing solicitors costs: £850 is the average saving on a typical sale and purchase through our panel of conveyancing solicitors compared to using a high street solicitor (Survey of 52 high street solicitors, September 2010).
