Leasehold Purchase

Our costs for a leasehold flat purchase

 This page gives you information about our fees for dealing with a leasehold flat purchase, 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 buying an older flat than a brand new apartment.

If you call us and give us a few details of the property you want to buy, and your mortgage arrangements, 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

 Home purchases 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 flat purchase?

 The total costs to you of your purchase will be made up of:

Our fees and most expenses are subject to VAT, currently 20%. In the information below, figures in brackets include VAT.

We will look at each of these elements in turn.

Our fees

Our fees include all the work normally involved in a flat purchase and (where applicable) your mortgage. Our fees will reflect the value of the property, where it is and how quickly the transaction needs to go through.

For a typical flat purchase up to a price of £1m, our fees range from £1,200 (£1,440) to £2,750 (£3,300) plus £25 (£30) for handling the transfer of the purchase money on your completion date.

For properties above £1m, our fees range from £2,750 (£3,300) up to £6,000 (£7,200).

If you are taking a mortgage, we will normally charge an additional £125 (£150) for reporting to your lender during the transaction, and arranging completion of your mortgage advance.

In most cases, a report of the property purchase will need to be made to H M Revenue and Customs, even if no SDLT is payable. We will charge you £50 (£60) for completing and sending this report.

Our expenses

In the typical flat purchase transaction, we will incur expenses for:

The expenses we incur will depend on the location of your new home. Some local councils charge more than others for a local search, and the location of the property may mean that additional investigations need to be made, for example, whether a road is maintained by the council.

In addition, there will be charges payable to the landlord of the development and/or to the management company responsible for its maintenance in connection with your purchase, and these charges are normally subject to VAT. The amount of the charges will vary from one apartment development to another, but are likely to be:

On a typical flat purchase, therefore, the total expenses you incur will be in the range £860 to £1,400 including VAT.

Flats are typically held on long leases, so you will have a landlord which owns the building and normally a management company which maintains the building and its grounds. You will pay a rent to the landlord and service charges to the management company as long as you own the flat. We will obtain details of the current rent and service charges and report them to you as part of our work.

SDLT

The Government’s SDLT is charged on a scale related to the purchase price of your property. However, SDLT is a complicated tax – with exemptions or lower rates for first-time buyers, and higher rates for buyers of second homes.

If you call us, we can normally tell you how much SDLT you must expect to pay with your free, “no obligation” quotation. Sometimes specialist advice may be needed to ensure that you pay the correct amount of SDLT.

Land Registry fees

The Land Registry’s registration fees are also charged on a scale related to the property value, and range from £40 to £910. There is no VAT on Land Registry fees.

Is everything included in your fees?

Our fees include all the legal work normally involved in a flat purchase. Sometimes, when we receive the documents relating to the property from the seller’s solicitors, or read the results of our enquiries, or have full instructions from your lender, we may find that additional work is required.

Examples would be:

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 purchase take?

This all depends on whether a “chain” of transactions is involved, and the length of the chain. If you are a first time buyer with your mortgage arranged, and your seller has already bought their next 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 that takes time to resolve, or pulls out 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 offer being accepted to you moving into your new home.

What steps are involved in a flat purchase?

The precise stages involved in a flat purchase vary slightly from one transaction to another, but the stages in a typical transaction will be: