The cost of a Minute of Agreement
When a couple buy a house, they sometimes contribute different amounts to the price or the deposit. Sometimes, the couple wish to record each other’s contribution in order that, on sale, the net proceeds of sale can be divided on the same basis. To do this properly requires a Minute of Agreement between the couple setting down who contributed what and what should happen on the sale of the property.
We charge a fixed fee of £300 (exclusive of VAT) for a Minute of Agreement relating to house purchase. This means the cost to you is £360 (including VAT of 20%). In the event that the Minute of Agreement also requires a Transfer of Title, the fee will be £450 (exclusive of VAT) which means the cost to you is £540 (including VAT)
In addition to our fee there will be the cost of registering the minute of agreement in the Books of Council and Session and obtaining two extracts – one for each party. The cost of the initial registration is £20 and for the additional extract is another £20. This means, in addition to the fee, you will also have to pay the registration dies totalling £40.
The total cost including VAT and registration dues will amount to £400.
The cost of granting a Standard Security over your house
You might not have a loan over your property but decide you want to borrow some money that is secured by a Standard Security. We are happy to deal with the legal aspects of this for you.
Our fee for carrying out this type of work is £250 (exclusive of VAT) which means the cost you will pay for our fee will be £300 (including VAT).
The additional costs of granting a Standard Security over your house
There are also additional charges when you wish to grant a Standard Security over your house in favour of a Lender. For instance, we will need to carry out searches and obtain reports to enable us to confirm to the lender that you own the house and there is nothing prohibiting you from granting the Standard Security. Finally, once the loan has been drawn down, we need to register the Standard Security in the Land Register.
We will now provide an example of costs when you buy and when you buy a house.
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Cost of granting a Standard Security over a house |
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|
Legal Fee |
£250.00 |
|
VAT on the Fee |
£50.00 |
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Property Search Dues (Property Enquiry Certificate and Legal Report) * |
£175.00 |
|
Registration Dues of Standard Security |
£80.00 |
|
Cost of Coal Authority Report |
£41.94 |
|
Cost of Advance Notice |
£20.00 |
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Estimated Total |
£544.94 |
What’s involved in the grant of a Standard Security process?
When you grant a security over a house, we will deal with the legal work to provide your lender with an effective charge over your property in the form of a Standard Security. There are essential steps we must take to achieve this. These are:
- Taking your instructions and giving you advice
- Carrying our anti-money laundering checks to comply with regulations
- Examining the title to the property
- Receiving and checking various important reports and searches
- preparing the Standard Security, explaining its content to you and having this signed
- Reporting on the title to your lender and requesting loan funds
- Sending the Standard Security to the Registers of Scotland for registration in the Land Register
- Confirming completion and accounting to you
Are there circumstances where the fee might increase?
Our fixed price fee covers all of the steps we’ve outlined above. Sometimes, however, there can be circumstances where additional work is required. There may be issues of title to be resolved or problems with alterations or additions made to the property. There may be a problem with the property boundaries or some adverse notice issued by the local authority. These are just some of the problems you might face when buying a house.
In such circumstances, we will explain the problem to you as soon as we find out about it. We will also let you know if we expect to be able to resolve this within the fixed fee price we’ve quoted. If the work is of such a nature that it will take considerable additional time or is of a complex nature, we will advise you of the additional likely cost to resolve the issue and fix the problem.
Where we need to carry out additional work for you we will charge a time-based fee. Where we need to carry out additional work for you, we will charge a time-based fee at the rate of £250 per hour exclusive of VAT. That means the cost would be £300 per hour (inclusive of VAT of 20%).
The cost of discharging a Standard Security over your house
When you’ve paid off your mortgage, you then need to discharge the Standard Security held by the lender over your property. There is a fairly straight forward process to discharge the standard security which we will discuss below.
Our fee for carrying out this type of work is £250 (exclusive of VAT) which means the cost you will pay for our fee will be £300 (including VAT).
The additional costs of discharging a Standard Security over your house
In addition to our fee, once the Discharge has been executed by your lender, we need to register this with the Land Register to remove the Standard Security (charge) over your title. The cost imposed by the Registers of Scotland when we register the Discharge on your behalf is £80.
This means that the total cost involved in discharging a Standard Security over your house is £380.
What’s involved in the discharge of a Standard Security process?
When you discharge a Standard Security over your property, there are essential steps we must take to achieve this. These are:
- Taking your instructions and giving you advice
- Carrying our anti-money laundering checks to comply with regulations
- Obtaining the title to your property
- preparing the Discharge and having this executed by your lender
- Redeeming any outstanding mortgage over your property
- Sending the Dischage to the Registers of Scotland for registration in the Land Register
- Confirming completion and accounting to you
Are there circumstances where the fee might increase?
Our fixed price fee covers all of the steps we’ve outlined above. Sometimes, however, there can be circumstances where additional work is required. You may, for instance, instruct us to transfer the title into joint names or, if the title is in joint names, into a sole name. You may instruct is to evacuate the survivorship destination in the title. There are just some examples of additional work you might instruct is to carry out which will give rise to circumstances where the fee will increase.
Where we need to carry out additional work for you we will charge a time-based fee. Where we need to carry out additional work for you, we will charge a time-based fee at the rate of £250 per hour exclusive of VAT. That means the cost would be £300 per hour (inclusive of VAT of 20%).