Solicitors fees on sale of Apartment ?

Japer

A close friend ( not computer literate ) is selling his apartment, through an auctioneer, albeit at a very low price. Money is tight and he is wondering what sort of fees a solicitor would charge for handling the sale of the apartment ? Are there any solicitors who do this work online for a cheap price? There is no loan / mortgage on the apartment.
Whats the going rate ( 0.5%, 1 % ? ) ....and whats the best rate he could reasonably haggle / other people have been quoted ?

Sydney2007

Minimum fees of about €,1000 plus VAT and outlays, but about .75 - 1% plus VAT and outlays when price is over €100,000 (i.e if price is only about €70,000, then 1% is too low for the amount of work)

nuac

sales of apartrments can be complicated especially regarding the management company. I doubt if any office would be interested for a fee below €1,500.

While e-conveyancing is upon us, and many solicitors use email for exchange of documents etc, afaik old fashioned DX still used.

Japer

nuac wrote: »

sales of apartrments can be complicated especially regarding the management company.

The management company runs like clockwork, and all payments are up to date.

nuac wrote: »

I doubt if any office would be interested for a fee below €1,500.

lol. Maybe those are the going prices in Dublin but the apartment is not in Dublin. One legal fees quote was for € 950, another was for € 680 and another one quoted 1400 but was soon haggled down to € 780. Another is 785 plus outlays. http://www.robertsweeneylaw.ie

Wonder why it is so expensive when in the UK its not unknown to be only charged £ 400...and in fact I have been told some people can do it themselves there ?


The sale price of the apartment is not much more than the average public sector wage in this country. The owner of the apartment is losing money on it so wants to keep legal fees to a minimum, he cannot justify celtic tiger fee levels when he has had the apartment on the market for a few years and is not getting a celtic tiger price.

Jo King

Japer wrote: »

Wonder why it is so expensive when in the UK its not unknown to be only charged £ 400...and in fact I have been told some people can do it themselves there ?

Conveyancing law is much more complicated here than in the UK mainland. A legacy of 700 years of British rule and a lack of initiative by the native law makers since independence.

McCrack

For sales we do all-in for €1,400 which includes VAT and registration charges. Thats what you will expect to pay or more.

I suspect Nuac is in line with the above.

Mrs Shuttleworth

Japer wrote: »

Maybe those are the going prices in Dublin but the apartment is not in Dublin. One legal fees quote was for € 950, another was for € 680 and another one quoted 1400 but was soon haggled down to € 780. Another is 785 plus outlays. http://www.robertsweeneylaw.ie

Wonder why it is so expensive when in the UK its not unknown to be only charged £ 400...and in fact I have been told some people can do it themselves there?

Days of haggling over legal fees are long gone, I'm afraid Japer. Insurance premiums for solicitors practices are going up five fold this year, averaging between 15k to 30k. Not worth opening your doors for given the low volume of business and/or litigation defendants that are simply not a good mark. There'll be loads of practices closing their doors before Christmas.

Expect to pay 1% plus VAT and outlays of your selling price.

nuac

Sadly have to agree with Mrs Shuttleworth's view - insurance a major problem this year as it was last year.

Sydney2007

Agree with Mrs. Shuttlesworth and nuac. Insurance of €28,500 this year. SMDF said it was because over 50% of our practice is in conveyancing, even though fee income has sunk to negligible amounts this year.
So it is impossible to do cheap conveyancing any more - each transaction would need about €300-€400 allocated just to the Indemnity Premium to pay its share of it. Some practices will close if matters dont improve.

Japer

Mrs Shuttleworth wrote: »

Expect to pay 1% plus VAT and outlays of your selling price.

so for a property selling for € 60,000 the fees should be € 600 plus vat + outlays ? Yet some people quote a lot higher than that. The firms quoting the lower prices are the ones getting the business now. Better some business than none. Pity Michael O'Leary was not in conveyancing / law, he would soon bring down the fees to uk levels if not lower!

Jo King

Michael O Leary is in a business he can make money in. If there was money in conveyancing he might try to get into it. A typical residential conveyance can easily take 20 hours work. A professional with the overheads of a solicitor cannot hope to turn a profit at €35 per hour. Getting a reliable competent solicitor to do a conveyance is the most important thing. Trying to save a few hundred euro by going cut price can be the ultimate false economy.

Japer

Jo King wrote: »

A typical residential conveyance can easily take 20 hours work.

really ? I thought if it was a simple case, no mortgage, and the selling solicitor had the deeds in his paw, it would not take 20 hours work to get the cheque from the buyers solicitor ? I would have thought that some solicitors would be so quiet nowadays that they would be glad of income when they otherwise would not get any.

johnnyskeleton

Japer wrote: »

really ? I thought if it was a simple case, no mortgage, and the selling solicitor had the deeds in his paw, it would not take 20 hours work to get the cheque from the buyers solicitor ? I would have thought that some solicitors would be so quiet nowadays that they would be glad of income when they otherwise would not get any.

You already have some quotes which seem to be the lowest (not necessarily the best) on the thread so far. Your friend could try ringing these firms, explaining the quote above (i.e. that it is in your view a particularly easy conveyance) and see what they say.

It is worth paying more to get a solicitor who knows what they are doing and has done a lot of conveyancing in my view, but it's your friend's choice. I would however recommend doing a bit of background work on the solicitor your friend is considering, and I'd also recommend asking them a lot of questions e.g. is the solicitor going to do the conveyance themselves or will it be done mostly by a legal executive etc.

Jo King

Japer wrote: »

really ? I thought if it was a simple case, no mortgage, and the selling solicitor had the deeds in his paw, it would not take 20 hours work to get the cheque from the buyers solicitor ? I would have thought that some solicitors would be so quiet nowadays that they would be glad of income when they otherwise would not get any.

It is not just a matter of handing over a bundle of title deeds in exchange for a cheque. The titles of many apartment blocks can be quite complicated. Where the site was assembled by purchasing several distinct plots of ground, as for example in a city centre, the volume of documentation can be enormous.
The draft contract has to be prepared, the deed prepared by the purchasers solicitor has to be checked, all pre contract enquiries have to be answered, all requisitions on title have to be answered, the status of the management company has to be checked and confirmation that there are no outstanding charges obtained. If there is an awkward solicitor on the other end of it, nitpicking and asking stupid questions, it can be a life shortening as well as a time consuming experience.
Some business is just not worth doing if the fee is too low. The time would be better spent trying to attract some other business.

littlemac1980

Japer wrote: »

really ? I thought if it was a simple case, no mortgage, and the selling solicitor had the deeds in his paw, it would not take 20 hours work to get the cheque from the buyers solicitor ? I would have thought that some solicitors would be so quiet nowadays that they would be glad of income when they otherwise would not get any.

It seems like a solid point you made, but you have to understand what the guys have been saying here about high insurance costs and your point on 'simple' conveyancing transactions are very closely related.

To say the current property market is buyer centered would be an understatement. I suspect any solicitor acting for a prospective buyer, will be going through your friends title with a fine-tooth comb. There will be nit-picking.

I agree with everything that the other posters have said. The prices nuac quoted are reasonable.