Legal fees quotes - buying a house in Cork

venividi

Hi, looking to buy new house in cork and currently searching for a solicitor. Have 2 quotes for €2,300 / €2,500 + vat for professional fees, ie not including outlays. House is just over 500k. Does this seem expensive to people and is it worth paying more to a firm that may be perceived as having an established reputation? Do you get what you pay for or is it a pretty standard service irrespective of the firm?

Eldarion

venividi wrote: »

Hi, looking to buy new house in cork and currently searching for a solicitor. Have 2 quotes for €2,300 / €2,500 + vat for professional fees, ie not including outlays. House is just over 500k. Does this seem expensive to people and is it worth paying more to a firm that may be perceived as having an established reputation? Do you get what you pay for or is it a pretty standard service irrespective of the firm?

Those figures don't seem too expensive. You should be expecting to fork out around €8k in total for the 'legal' side of the house purchase. I've seen professional fees ex VAT range from €1.2k all the way up to €4k.

• Solicitor's Professional Fee + VAT
• Stamp Duty @ 1%
• Deed of Transfer
• Mortgage Fee
• Open New Folio
• Folio and File Plan on completion
• Searches; Judgement, Bankruptcy, Land Registry

Uno my Uno.

venividi wrote: »

Hi, looking to buy new house in cork and currently searching for a solicitor. Have 2 quotes for €2,300 / €2,500 + vat for professional fees, ie not including outlays. House is just over 500k. Does this seem expensive to people and is it worth paying more to a firm that may be perceived as having an established reputation? Do you get what you pay for or is it a pretty standard service irrespective of the firm?

Unless it is already clear that there is something wrong with the title and there is additional work required I'd consider that a little on the high side, €1,800 -2,000 + VAT and outlays would be a bit more reasonable IMO.

BTW the value of the house should not be a factor in determining a solicitor's fees.

TheDriver

I think it is expensive unless there is hidden work e.g. Neg equity. Price of house shouldn't matter. I use a great solicitor in Bandon if u want to PM me

MarkAnthony

To clarify, €2500 + VAT for professional fees alone? That seems high. I'm at 1400 + VAT or so for the professional fees and dealing with someone I would consider to be excellent.

Arbiter of Good Taste

I made the mistake with my first purchase of going on the basis of cost thinking the work can't be that difficult, etc, etc. What a mistake that was......

If you can get a recommendation from someone you know and trust, go with it. Cost is not the top priority

Uno my Uno.

Arbiter of Good Taste wrote: »

I made the mistake with my first purchase of going on the basis of cost thinking the work can't be that difficult, etc, etc. What a mistake that was......

If you can get a recommendation from someone you know and trust, go with it. Cost is not the top priority

Expensive solicitors mess stuff up too, more often than they should.

venividi

BTW the value of the house should not be a factor in determining a solicitor's fees.[/quote]

Ya I agree but it definitely is a factor in a solicitors quote. It seems to be the first question they ask! Went with recommendation. Managed to negotiate a few hundred off fee with difficulty!

MrDerp

That's very high if you ask me.

We paid around half that in fees for a house in Cork which didn't cost much less than what you're spending, and we had some stuff to be investigated (boundaries, wayleaves etc split between Land Registry and registry of deeds). Shop around, I would say.

I know people who paid 1% in Dublin as an all-in price, I wouldn't accept that in a fit. They're not estate agents, handling a bigger sale. Their work doesn't change for a bigger house. It's not harder to do their job with a more exclusive house.

I'd certainly be haggling the fees down to 1200-1500. Unless the house is sitting on expired leasehold, has a boundary dispute registered, has funny documents, or has questionable planning I wouldn't pay a cent more.

Go to the land registry website (watch out for the cheeky intermediary one looking to middle man you) and get a copy of the deeds* on pdf. It'll be all of a fiver for uncertified deeds. Do a planning search on the cork city council website and find out if there was any applications rejected which you think were applied to the house regardless. If there's any right-of-way visible on the land registry, get documents for the neighbouring houses etc for a fiver each.

* you may need to go registry of deeds if property is not on land registry.

If there's no catches, and in most cases their won't be, print out all the documents and bring them to solicitors and ask for their best price. Don't be paying a contingency fee against something you can check yourself with a computer, some patience and 2 hours of your time.

Arbiter of Good Taste

Uno my Uno. wrote: »

Expensive solicitors mess stuff up too, more often than they should.

And that's why I said go with a recommendation from someone they trust....:rolleyes: