Fees

Questions about selling property
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fbg52
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Fees

Post by fbg52 »

hello,

We have put our property up for sale in Paphos and had an offer. We would just like to know what the norm is for the lawyer's fees for dealing with the conveyancing. Is it generally a fixed fee or a percentage of the selling price?

Many thanks, very grateful for an answer.
Pantheman
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Re: Fees

Post by Pantheman »

The price would very much depend on the selling price, I mean if you were to sell at 500,000 you would not expect to pay the same if you were selling for 100,000.

In any case you can ask for a written quote from more than one lawyer . If it helps in our area you can get it for 1200+vat (for a sale of around 120,000 ) and upwards depending.
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Nigel Howarth
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Re: Fees

Post by Nigel Howarth »

Following on what Pan has advised - The UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office publishes a list of English-speaking lawyer that you can find at List of lawyers in Cyprus.

I suggest you contact 2 or 3 of them for competitive written quotes.

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The Bear
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Re: Fees

Post by The Bear »

Pantheman wrote: 21 Jul 2020 20:09 The price would very much depend on the selling price, I mean if you were to sell at 500,000 you would not expect to pay the same if you were selling for 100,000.
Actually, I would expect to pay very similar fees - though I haven't yet tried to sell in Cyprus so haven't immersed myself in the detail that may confound my expectations.

I fully understand that disbursements could very well be value-dependent but I don't see that fees would be. If it takes n hours of staff time to convey a property valued at 100k then why would it take longer if the value were 500k? Come to that, why would it take less time if it were valued at 50k? All other things being equal, what good reasons exist for fees to vary solely with contract price?

I suppose there might be a possibility that a legal office has specific costs which it chooses to recover by pro rata allocation in their fees ledger to conveyances (perhaps some sort of insurance for which their premium is related to value of properties they convey) so that may explain small differences in fees - but not significant differences.

Consider an (admittedly unrealistic) example where I have to sell quite cheaply to achieve a quick sale and pay a fee of €x but my neighbour holds on during a sudden market boom and sells his absolutely identical in every way property very soon after for 25% more. Can legal fees charged to him of 125% of €x really be justified? By the way, saying that all lawyers would be applying the same calculation and all wanting to charge the same 125% fee because that's what the market will bear when there's no genuine competition isn't what I call a proper justification.
Pantheman
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Re: Fees

Post by Pantheman »

I believe that the higher cost for higher priced properties is risk based to the law firm.
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FSB Properties Ltd
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The Bear
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Re: Fees

Post by The Bear »

Pantheman wrote: 28 Jul 2020 20:57 I believe that the higher cost for higher priced properties is risk based to the law firm.
Well yes, I'd expect lawyers to claim that and I fully accept that you believe it - but I don't.

I had risk in mind when I made mention of insurance and attributing recovery of the premium to fees ledger accounts on some sort of value-related basis rather than absorbing it as a general office cost. If pro-rata recovery is applied then some small variation in fees could, indeed, be expected - but it shouldn't be significant in relation to the charges for hours expended.

I'm talking about mundane residential property sales - bread-and-butter work. Looking at the risks, the reasonably-expected probability of them arising and the consequences of a failure in risk management makes me wonder how incompetent or negligent a lawyer would have to be to need to make a claim on professional indemnity insurance in this area. Premia related to this work ought to be relatively low.

When next chatting with a lawyer I'll see if I can get a straight answer to this (don't laugh - there's a first time for everything).
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