Cost of Conveyancy on Moving House

I have just got a quote for house conveyancy solicitors fees of 1,000 +VAT on house sale and 1,000 + VAT on house , plus the usual extras of land reg fees, seaches etc, which brings the total cost to <= 3,000 -3,500 euro inc VAT.

Is this a good price for Dublin?

If not, can anyone recommend someone else?

Not a great price. PM me and I will give you the name of a solicitor in Bray who will charge around 2500 in total.

You need to compare like with like.

There is no point in comparing a "fee+vat+outlay" quote with an all-in guesstimate.

On a like for like basis, the only way your quote could go down to 2500 is if the solicitor charged a fee of only a couple of hundred euro OR if the outlays are going to come in at less than your solicitor estimated

(OR if your solicitor is tacking on extra charges in the guise of outlay - a practice which I have not seen first hand, but from details other posters have given, it appears that it may sometimes happen -though I cannot see that they would explain the discrepancy here).

As a fee, €1000 is highly competitive on price. I suspect that there are some solicitors out there charing as little as €800. I reckon that for an ordinary estate type house, a fee in the range of 1200- 1500 is about average.

Solicitors have up till recently charged 1% of the purchase price of the property and are now reducing some to .5% and some lower.

Given that conveyancing tasks are pretty much the same for every property, unless its a little unique, its fair to say that Solicitors have been creaming the money for the same amount of work. The old line on the bill of 'Sundries' covers a lot of sins and is perfectly legal.

My solicitor did our conveyancing for 2300 in the end, because he is the family solicitor and only does this for peope who we recommend.

On average a Solicitors costs are about 600 so anything above that is pure profit. I know this is as I worked on the development of the Solicitors Accounting Systems in Ireland a few years back.

slinky said:

On average a Solicitors costs are about 600 so anything above that is pure profit. I know this is as I worked on the development of the Solicitors Accounting Systems in Ireland a few years back.

Click to expand...

The firm I work for recently surveyed time spent on conveyancing. The average time spent on a file for a purchase was 10 hours - that would equate to €60.00 per hour by your calculations.

slinky said:

1. Solicitors have up till recently charged 1% of the purchase price of the property and are now reducing some to .5% and some lower.

2. Given that conveyancing tasks are pretty much the same for every property, unless its a little unique, its fair to say that Solicitors have been creaming the money for the same amount of work. The old line on the bill of 'Sundries' covers a lot of sins and is perfectly legal.

3. My solicitor did our conveyancing for 2300 in the end, because he is the family solicitor and only does this for peope who we recommend.

4. On average a Solicitors costs are about 600 so anything above that is pure profit. I know this is as I worked on the development of the Solicitors Accounting Systems in Ireland a few years back.

Click to expand...

I have numbered the individual sentences to deal with them.

1. Not true. Hardly any solicitor in the past 5-10 years charged or quoted on a percentage basis. Most quote on a fixed fee basis - outlays extra.
2. "conveyancing tasks are pretty much the same for every property". This is a nonsense statement from someone who is not qualified to make such a statement.
"its fair to say that Solicitors have been creaming the money for the same amount of work. "
Complete tosh. If anything, anecdotal evidence is that many solicitors at the very cheap end of the scale have been working for less than break even fees, using unqualified staff and leaving a legacy of worrisome title issues for the future.

4. "On average a Solicitors costs are about 600 so anything above that is pure profit. I know this is as I worked on the development of the Solicitors Accounting Systems in Ireland a few years back"

More nonsense and rubbish. 600euro on an average conveyance is considerably less than break even. The actual cost of providing a service depends on many factors - size of office, turnover, willingness to offer one service as a loss leader etc.,etc.

Working on an Accounting system does not make you qualified to decide how much it costs to run an efficient profitable solicitors office, how much each individual solicitor should charge for each conveyance etc.,etc.

From the coalface, MOB has a much better grasp of that. Mind you if you can persuade someone to work for nothing, or less than at a profit, why not?

mf

mf1 said:

1. Not true. Hardly any solicitor in the past 5-10 years charged or quoted on a percentage basis. Most quote on a fixed fee basis - outlays extra.

Click to expand...

I agree with the rest of your post but just for information; my own personal experience in the purchase of four seperate properties in the last nine years, all in the Greater Dublin area, for three of the purchases I was quoted a percentage based fee on inquiry, for two of the purchases I was charged a percentage based fee until I finally wised up on the third purchase and negotiated down from a percentage based fee to a fixed fee.

These quotes / charges were from a broad spectrum of solicitor firms from large solicitors firms to local smaller solicitors.

Again, this just my experience and may not be norm.

Hi efm ( even if you are band!)

Can't argue with your own personal experience. In my own office, I have found until recently that purchasers were driven by cost only and, sometimes, just knowing that I was wasting my time by trying to discuss and advise, I would just quote a % - knowing I would not get the work and just to get people off the phone.

It is amazing the number of people who are happy to take up a professional's time getting lots of free advice even though it can be quite clear quite quickly that price is the only issue. It can be a difficult and fine line between trying to reel a client in on a "quality and fair price" basis and not giving too much advice freely to someone who clearly is just ringing around.

Swings and roundabouts.

mf

surely compared to estate agents solicitors fees are very low for a lot more measurable work.
€60 per hour seems on the low side for someone who has spent 7 plus years studying and training in their profession.

MFI - I agree in general with your posts and I also agree the fees quoted are very reasonable (call out charge before any work is nearly 100 Euro for fixing a washing machine !) but take issue with this (which I've done before on AAM)

"anecdotal evidence is that many solicitors at the very cheap end of the scale have been working for less than break even fees, using unqualified staff and leaving a legacy of worrisome title issues for the future."

Who is going to benefit from the title issues in the future? Solicitor's who will get paid for sorting it out.
Why don't the professional solicitor's body ensure that title issues don't arise over and over again? Because it would reduce the work and result in lower fees.

Slinky what exactly does the fee of 2500 include - absolutely everything (VAT, land registery) for buying and selling? This is two transactions if I'm not mistaken. You couldn't possible know the fee without more details of what was involved. I don't know how much outlays are on these transactions but wouldn't one have to have more details before giving a price?

"Who is going to benefit from the title issues in the future? Solicitor's who will get paid for sorting it out.
Why don't the professional solicitor's body ensure that title issues don't arise over and over again? Because it would reduce the work and result in lower fees."


Hi Bronte

There is a problem with some low cost conveyancing firms. Not all. Issues do sometimes arise and probably go un-noticed until a sale of the original property is imminent. At that stage, either the vendor is still with their original solicitor or has gone to someone new. Someone new is entitled to charge to fix the problem - and the vendor is entitled to recover that from the original solicitor. How practical that is is another days work. In reality, its a nightmare with, in my experience, an older more experienced solicitors absorbing some of the costs to get the sale closed. If the vendor is still with the original solicitor, they can exert pressure on them to do the work for nothing.

So long as you have consumers wanting work done for as damn near nothing as makes no difference and a professional body of solicitors who are producing more solicitors than there is work for, there will be cut throat price cutting. But like everything else, you have to ask the question, if you are paying peanuts..........

And you will see the same issues arising in all other professions as well - particularly accountants

"Why don't the professional solicitor's body ensure that title issues don't arise over and over again?"

I don't think they can oversee every transaction, there are very clear guidelines on procedures to follow in every transaction but they are tedious and very very timeconsuming which is where people cut corners. And a title issue can be anything - its not necessarily the same issue going around. These are current issues I have:

1. Estate not taken in charge some 15 years after completion - what is the problem?
2. Planning permission exists for a substantial development at the rear of a property - how will it affect the property in sale?
3. Leasehold property bought in sole name, freehold interest bought in joint names of spouses, Land Registry cannot merge the two interests, so a Lease remains as a burden on a property.
4. Outstanding dealings in the Land Registry some 5 years after originally lodged.

I could go on.


mf

God

Sorry for setting this off !

Anyway, for the record, I got a quote of 3,750 from a solicitor in west dublin, whereas I got a quote of 4,750 from a solicitor in dublin city centre

Both quotes are for both home sale and home purchase, inc VAT, and assume "worst case scenario" for all the fixed outlays that are outside solicitor control. I believe I am comparing like with like.

Both solicitors sound equally competant and personable on the phone....

So there you go.....

It all comes down to the fact that if dedicated enough you can do the conveyancing yourself. However as usual what you get on this site are people with real experiences and those wishing to keep creaming the money telling everyone how strapped they are.

To clarify 2500 for all charges for purchase only.

Well slinky I'd say taytoman is getting a bargain and you should admit as much. If conveyancing is as easy as you say why don't more people do it themselves - they don't because it's too complicated.

OP there is a difference between the two quotes, make sure you get them in writing so you are sure that both quotes are for the same work, we've had many people on AAM saying they were surprised at the bill afterwards. Also I think it would be better to visit them before you make the decision as over the phone can make it difficult to judge someone. As an aside how come you don't use the same solicitor you used to purchase the house?