Freehold Sale
Our costs for a freehold house sale
This page gives you information about our fees for dealing with a freehold house sale, and the expenses you will incur in connection with our work. Not all properties are the same, and there may be more fees or expenses involved, for example, in selling an historic cottage than a brand new home.
If you call us and give us a few details of the property you are selling, we can give you a personalised quotation which will detail our fees and the expenses likely to be payable in your particular transaction.
For your free, “no obligation” quotation, please call one of our experienced conveyancing team on 01223 578070 (Cambridge) or 01223 518317 (Histon).
Our conveyancing team
House sales are dealt with by Alison Blackman, Laura Hales, Kelly Hall and Emma Hunt in our Cambridge office where Alison supervises the team, and by David Parker, Rachael Partridge, and Emma Stanley in our Histon office.
You can find details of their qualifications and experience by following the link to Our People here
What fees and expenses will I incur on a house sale?
The total costs to you of your purchase will be made up of:
- our fees for your sale, and
- expenses we incur, of which there are more details below
Our fees and some expenses are subject to VAT, currently 20%. In the information below, figures in brackets include VAT.
We will look at both these elements in turn.
Our fees
Our fees include all the work normally involved in a house sale. Our fees will reflect the value of the property, where it is and how quickly the transaction needs to go through.
For a typical house sale up to a price of £1m, our fees range from £950 (£1,140) to £2,500 (£3,000). In addition, we charge £25 (£30) for handling each transfer of money on the completion date – usually there is one such transfer, to repay your mortgage, but there may be more if, for example, you have more than one mortgage on your property.
For properties above £1m our fees range from £2,500 (£3,000) up to £6,000 (£7,200).
Our expenses
In the typical sale transaction, we will incur expenses of:
- £6 for obtaining copies of the Land Register entries and title plan relating to your property
- in some cases, we may have to obtain copies of earlier documents from the Land Registry, at a cost of £3 each and
- bank charges of £8 (plus VAT) which we pay for money transfers.
Is everything included in your fees?
Our fees include all the legal work normally involved in a house sale. Sometimes, when we review the documents relating to your property, we may find that additional work is required.
Examples would be:
- if you have carried out alterations without planning permission or Building Regulations approval; or
- if you have lost documents relating to alterations you have made; or
- if your legal title to the property is defective in some way.
If a need for any additional work arises we will always tell you, and inform you what additional fees or expenses are likely to be incurred.
How long will my sale take?
This all depends on whether a “chain” of transactions is involved, and the length of the chain. If your buyer is a first time buyer with a mortgage arranged, and you have already bought your new home, it could be very quick. But if you are in a longer chain, and a party somewhere in the chain delays, or a problem arises which takes time to resolve or someone pulls out of the chain before contracts are exchanged, every transaction in the chain will be slowed down.
In our experience, the average transaction will take 12-16 weeks from your buyer’s offer being accepted to completion of your sale.
What steps are involved in a house sale?
The precise stages involved in a house sale vary slightly from one transaction to another, but the stages in a typical transaction will be:
- we take your instructions and give you general advice
- we ask you to complete property information forms relating to your property and supply supporting documents
- we prepare a draft contract, and send it to the buyer’s solicitor with your completed property information forms and copies of relevant Land Registry documents
- we obtain your replies to any additional enquiries asked by the buyer’s solicitor
- we arrange for you to sign the contract, and the transfer of the property to the buyer
- we agree a completion date and exchange contracts to commit everyone in the chain to that date, and we receive the deposit payable by the buyer
- we obtain a redemption statement for your mortgage
- on completion, we receive the balance of the purchase money from the buyer’s solicitor, and release the keys for the buyer to collect
- we repay your mortgage and, if instructed to do so, pay your estate agents out of the proceeds of sale, then
- we account to you for the balance due to you after deducting our fees and expenses.