Legal Fees on a Mortgage
This is because whoever is lending you the money (think bank or building society) will be incurring legal costs and charges which they will, of course, pass onto you to pay for them. These costs are typically in the region of around £150 - £250 for a standard type of mainstream mortgage product and so you should expect to have the bill for these too.
The charge is usually set by the solicitor that acts on the part of the lender, and so they will be the one that set the amount of this particular levy rather than the bank or building society itself.
Often it will be the case that they will use your solicitor (indeed this cost often gets added by your solicitor when they tell you their costs if you tell them that you will be getting a mortgage on the property).
Sometimes the legal fees are not passed onto you and this is usually mentioned prominently as one of the sweeteners to get you to take out that particular product, so you can consider if you see free legals that it will save you in the region of £200, although of course there may be other costs to consider so don't necessarily assume that will automatically make it the best mortgage product for you of course!
Other fees on mortgages are covered in the general mortgage fees article apart from one other - that is the insurance penalty. You will have to take out building insurance to ensure that the property is covered should something bad happen to the property (such as it somehow catches fire and burns to ashes). Often however lenders will charge you a fee if you take out the buildings insurance with a different provider: in other words it is a penalty for exercising your right to take out the buildings insurance where you want (as of course everyone will get buildings insurance on their house anyway).
So that is what legal fees are on your property, and as you can see, when combined with the general mortgage fees discussed in the other article, the fees alone make getting a mortgage a very expensive product and you will have spent a lot of money before you even get the privilege of starting to pay off the mortgage proper!
More property related articles:
- First Time Buyers
- Home Information Pack Contents
- Mortgage Fees
- Questions to ask when viewing a house
- Life Insurance
