Solicitor's fees buying and selling

Mr. Grieves

Quick question that those with experience might be able to answer.

We're looking to sell our house and buy a new (secondhand) one. We asked our solicitor from the original purchase of our house for costs and fees and it seems they charge their fee (already a bit high than average as far as we can tell) twice: once for the sale of our existing house and again for the purchase of the new house.

I'm referring to the fee, I understand the costs will of course be different.

Is this normal to charge double for buying + selling, it seem like there's not quite twice the amount of work, I hoped the fee would be lower?

And finally, any opinion on moving solicitor for reduced fees? We were happy with their work the last time (though we won't really know if they did their job properly until we sell...). They have all our documents on file etc. Is moving a hassle?

busylady

There is two separate transactions here, a sale and a purchase. There would be a separate fee for each.

I moved solicitor when in the midst of buying a house. I did it because the solicitor admitted from the word go that house conveyancing wasn't his specialty by any means, and although he went along with it at first, as the sale got a tad complicated he threw his hands up and said id be best with someone else (and recommended someone else).

I admired his honesty.

He had a file of all my info that he sent to the new solicitor. It was very, very early stages (pretty much nothing had been done, really) so maybe it could have been trickier if i were into it a bit more, but i just rang the relevant people to let them know that i had swapped solicitor and then things kinda just carried on from where they were. Probably only caused a delay of 2-3 days really, which turned out to be a fairly minor delay in the grand scheme of things.

Never understand people not wanting to mention money, but if it's helpful, I ended up paying the solicitor €2,100 all in (minus stamp duty) to do the sale (the original solicitor never charged). Not sure if that helps you or not. Their 'professional fee' was advertised at €1,000.

oliboni.n.lee

Does anyone knows if i have to pay the same fees when switch mortgage?