"If you were to offer a 'special deal' on conveyancing in an estate where you had done the initial conveyance to the developer, how much would you reduce your price by?"
Hi Rainyday;
The answer to this specific question would normally be nil. However, if I was buying more than one house in an estate, it would certainly be feasible for me to give a discount to each house purchaser. In practice, this is what actually happens, albeit in a relatively informal way - I am more inclined to take new business for existing local housing estate purchases than I am for purchases in other areas.
I would guess that reading the title to an estate (and raising various queries as appropriate) might take up to 25% of the total time spent on a file. Also, this is the expensive time (i.e. generally has to be a solicitor, whereas a lot of the other time spend on a conveyancing file is work that can be done by well trained support staff.) So I suppose that it would pay me to give a discount of €200 per unit or thereabouts if I was doing a batch of house purchases in the same estate.
CCovich: imperfect analogy I admit, but the point I was seeking to make is that the fact that a transaction has already occurred in relation to a product (i.e. purchase of site by developer) does not really lessen the transaction costs on a division and re-sale of that product. (i.e. subdivision and development as a housing estate).
Hi Sherib,
"However, I cannot see the need for a mortgaged house owner being charged the full whack all over again upon remortgaging the same property, the deeds never having left the Building Society and with no change in ownership."
I agree. There is no good legal reason why this should happen, and it does not require any change at all to our legal system. A couple of points do arise. Firstly, if a mortgage is over €254k after top-up, further stamp duty needs to be paid, and this increased figure then needs to be registered in the land registry. Secondly, some lenders will require a fresh mortgage deed for a further advance, for reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained to me. Generally, PTSB will look for a fresh mortgage deed, while BOI, AIB, NIB will not. However, PTSB will sometimes handle the top-up loan in-house (so the borrower doesn't need to get a solicitor at all). Overall, there is no great consistency in this area, and there should be. For a solicitor, the top-up mortgage is not a money spinner - we try to avoid it if at all possible, because we cannot charge an economically viable fee without the client (justifiably) feeling hard done by.
On transparency of fees, of course a doctor will tell you what something will cost; So will a solicitor. But does this equate to transparency?
The consumer is generally not in any sort of position to assess if the price quoted represents good value. When you say that "It would be a sad day if they timed every consultation and charged accordingly " I am afraid I have to disagree slightly. As a business, doctors and solicitors have this in common - they have no stock on which they can put a mark-up; all they have to sell is their own time. Sometimes, I can save a six figure sum for a client with 10 minutes work plus 20 years study, experience and knowledge. That is when I put aside my time sheet and have a "wee chat" with the client. Sometimes a surgeon can charge €4,000 for a procedure (and maybe a lot more for all I know - I am, thankfully, not a large consumer of medical services) which takes an hour, plus two follow-ups of an hour each, together with the experience and reputation which makes that surgeon the one in demand for this procedure. Will the surgeon attempt to justify a charge of €1333 per hour? Of course not. While time billing is not always appropriate (at least not from the supplier's perspective!), it is transparent. I think more transparency is probably not a bad thing for the consumer.
