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Can you negotiate transfer costs? Yes!

You are selling a property (or buying a property and about to make an offer to purchase) and your conveyancing attorney has provided you with a quotation for the transfer costs; and you are wondering whether you can negotiate those costs or whether they are set in stone.

The short answer is that yes, some of those costs are negotiable. Property sellers can and must negotiate with their conveyancing attorneys to reduce the transfers costs

Attorneys are NOT allowed to offer discounts

Because of various archaic rules, lawyers in South Africa are not allowed to negotiate discounted attorney transfer fees. So, if you ask what the transfer costs are, the lawyer will always product the standard transfer costs. Click here if you want to see what the standard transfer costs are for property transfers.

Attorneys ARE allowed to negotiate fees

Whilst attorneys are not allowed to market discounted rates on their transfer cost charges, they are allowed to negotiate; but YOU, the client must initiate the negotiations, they are not allowed to initiate it. It is perfectly appropriate for you to ask for a 20 percent discount on the fees the attorney proposes.

Transfer costs for R1,000,000 property

Transfer Attorney Fees R26,835
Postages & Petties R776
Deeds Office Fees R1,374
Electronic Generation Fee R794
FICA R460
Deeds Office Searches R345
Rates Clearance Fees R690
Transfer Duty R0
Total Transfer Costs (incl VAT) R31,274

Which items can you negotiate

The only transfer cost item which is really negotiable is the transfer attorney fee. Transfer duty is fixed and set by government, whilst the other items are real costs which the conveyancing attorney is going to incur. So, in the instance of the R1m property you would want to negotiate the transfer attorney fees of R26,835 down.

NB: BEFORE signing an Offer to Purchase

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