2024-12-12
We sat down with CEO, Kevin Tunnicliffe to discuss the reasoning behind the change that has impacted our Fixed Price Legals product range...
How long have you featured the Fixed Price product at SortRefer without making changes?
The product has not changed for 15 years since we launched it. Inflation alone would put it much higher than the new proposed pricing. With HM Land Registry increasing their fees, we were encouraged to look at the overall package and future proof.
What made you increase the legal fees for suppliers within this change?
The legal fee for suppliers has needed to be increased for a while. With additional workloads and more regulations to deal with, they need to be paid more for the work being done. With the change in price structure for our Fixed Price product, we have resolved this and have increased our supplier legal fees. Our suppliers are very happy with what we will pay them on this product range going forward.
HM Land Registry increased their fees – but how much have they changed?
The increases to HMLR Search Fee, Official Copies, and Bankruptcy fees for one person would add £14.40 to the overall price, which increases to £19.20 for two people. This meant our choice was either to reduce something else in the fixed fee to balance this off, or to change the whole package. We decided that reducing something in the fixed fee would have been a backward step. We have therefore changed the product range to make the fixed element include the legals, plus ID, hence renaming it to Fixed Price Legals plus disbursements.
We now include the TT fee within the overall price, taking away one common objection to the old product range...
As a comparison, here is an example of the actual increase:
- Old £249 FP RM = £249
- TT Fee = £42
- Increase in disbursements = £19.20 (2 people)
- Total they would pay if we did nothing = £310.20
- Actual fee with new £225 product = £320.70 (based on mortgage below £100k)
- £10.50 difference is distributed amongst portal/Introducer/supplier fees.
The difference is higher as the mortgage amount increases, which allows us to have the same referral fee across all bandings.
How have the Referral Fees changed on the Fixed Price Legals?
Before, there was a tiered approach that changed per product and was dependent upon the loan amount. It is now easier to understand the Referral Fee potential, as there is one fee per product price.
It is easier to understand the referral fees with one amount per revised product price. They are set out below:
- £175 product - £40 Referral Fee
- £225 product - £60 Referral Fee
- £275 product - £90 Referral Fee
- £375 product - £140 Referral Fee
- £475 product - £200 Referral Fee
- £575 product 0 £280 Referral Fee
In summary...
To summarise, we needed to make changes to our whole Conveyancing product range following the recent HM Land Registry changes, but the most significant impact was on our Remortgage packages.
While considering the fee increase, we have found the right balance, adapting the inclusions on the Fixed Price Legals, making our referral fees more straightforward and most importantly, increasing our supplier legal fees, which were well overdue.
We hope our users can understand our changes to our Fixed and Flexi Remortgage packages.
If you have any questions about the changes, please contact our friendly team on:
T: 0333 456 4567
