It’s no secret that aside from the funds you should have for the purchase alone, there’s roughly a hundred to a thousand pounds that you should put on your budget for conveyancing.

Whether you’re buying or selling, conveyancing fees will likely vary from one firm and location to another – depending on circumstances and other factors. However, you need to be aware that a fair and transparent conveyancing quote should not hide anything from you.

To give you an idea and help keep you away from dodgy conveyancers who may not likely look after your best interest, here’s a simple guide and ways to protect yourself from them.

First of all, when you’re looking at a conveyancing quote, it should be divided into two parts:

1. The conveyancer’s basic fees – which includes compensation for their time, expertise, and communication.

2. The conveyancing disbursements – which are payments made to various individuals, companies, and government agencies to make sure that everything about the transaction and the property is in order. (e.g., Searches, Surveys, Stamp Duty, Land Registry, etc.)

While disbursement costs are likely to be similar as they are fixed charges or variable depending on a set scale by a governing body, the basic fees may be different from one firm to another.

Because conveyancing has become quite competitive in the market, there are many firms that use tricks to make their services look cheaper in print than in reality. Some of these tricks involve fabricating disbursement details that a client should not really be paying for or might have already been included in the basic fees.

Inventing these “supplemental” disbursements give them the following benefits:

1. Suspiciously add extra income for them, thus increasing their profits by a huge sum.

2. Makes them look as if their basic fees are lower than it actually is.

3. It makes the entire conveyancing quote look cheaper when in fact you’re paying for disbursements that shouldn’t be there.

In order for you not to fall victim to this kind of trick , you can do the following:

Always check the quotes if the disbursements have been properly itemised.

Check the fine print for any hidden charges or supplemental costs. Add them to the quoted price and see the real price for the conveyancer’s services.

As soon as you have checked these things and you have made up your mind on who to hire (based on the pricing details you compared), you can immediately contact your chosen conveyancer to start the process.

You might also want to keep in mind that it’s best to hire a conveyancing solicitor even before the purchase offer is accepted. In the past, buyers and sellers generally have to wait for a purchase offer to be agreed before instructing their solicitors. However, having a conveyancer ready to take your instructions even before the “offer” stage may be beneficial as they can give you appropriate advice as to whether you can continue with the transaction or not, given a few circumstances occurring or some issues in the survey results.

There’s actually no-need for you to worry about their basic fees if you’re hiring them before the offer is accepted as majority of conveyancing firms now have a fixed-fee payment method, as opposed to the past’s hourly basis payment for services – not to mention that most conveyancers also employ a no-move-no-fee scheme.