Conveyancing land

[IanP]

Hey all,

bit of a long shot this one!

There is a little patch of land to the rear of our garden that the current owners don't use. We'd like to buy it from them and have done some initial investigations. The land itself is probably only worth a couple of hundred quid, but the quote for conveyancing from our solicitor was about £500, and that was just our fees - apparently we'd need to cover the sellers fees too. That gives a grand total of about £1000 to the solicitors to buy a £200-300 piece of land

I was wondering if anyone here has done their own conveyancing and how difficult it was, or whether anyone has come across a very cheap conveyancing service that they have used and found to be good.

Cheers,
Ian.

[NOG]

Look for another solicitor, you need one that deals with farmers cos they are always buying and selling land. Tell your solicitor you don't need searches, get a Land Reg search (£47) to prove who owns it. Should only cost about £200. You also need to know what it is described as on the council rates system cos you could get clobbered for NNDR. If it is rated you will need to get it taken out of rating ~I think it is a CRV7...could be wrong its been a couple of years since I did rate law.

[Alice]

Hello Ian, I think you definately need another solicitor. I recently sold a little bit of ground to a neighbour so that it could be incorporated into their garden. The total conveyancing fee was less than £300 for both parties.

[IanP]

Hey Alice,

that's exactly what we need to do. We'll obviously have to shop around a bit.

Cheers,
Ian.

[blossom]

get a Land Reg search (£47) to prove who owns it.

Last time I looked it was £4 for a copy of a land registry deed (a few months ago). I had to get my own when buying my house coz my solicitor was so crap. You can get them online.

[NOG]

G*D we must be making a shed load of profit on these then....