Settlement fees

[BLTN]

Hi all,

I'm trying to understand how the fees charged by settlement agents works, can anyone clarify or does anyone have any inside knowledge?

My bill looks like this (with my commentary as to how I think they bill you next to it:

Costs & Fees
Settlement fee (just whatever they want to charge you really)
Landgate registration (fixed fee)

Enquiry Fees
Landgate Enquiry Processing Fee (seen a small range of values here)
Water Corp Rate Enquiry Fee (appears to be set by Water Corp)
Council Rate Enquiry Fee (seen a wide range of fees here - do different councils set different fees?)
Land Tax Enquiry Fee (appears to be fixed?)

Are these all fixed, or do the agents put their own margins in?

Disbursements
Landgate Title Document Search Fee (I've seen numbers ranging from $25-$100?!?!)
Remaining disbursements are obviously variable and don't have any particular logic to them (another way to add in profit margins)

If anyone can shed any light on this I'd greatly appreciate it.

Cheers,
BLTN

 

[Aaron_C]

All those things would be government charges and lawyers/settlement agents don't put a margin on top of those fees. They do charge a fee for service which is their 'margin' if you want to put it that way.

 

[Terry_w]

Lawyers don't usually put margins but they often use search companies who may add a margin. e.g. going to council for a certificate may be $10 cheaper than getting it through a search company.

 

[Jake D]

What did you buy? I haven't seen you posting here for a while.

 

[BLTN]

Lawyers don't usually put margins but they often use search companies who may add a margin. e.g. going to council for a certificate may be $10 cheaper than getting it through a search company.

Ah ok.

I'm still confused how some enquiry fees can vary so dramatically though, seems suss..

What did you buy? I haven't seen you posting here for a while.

A shitbox in Pinjarra I posted a thread somewhere about me stressing about it haha

Yeah, I want to get a bit more active on here, but life is just so ridiculously busy at the moment it's hard to find the time. This year has been non stop so far. I'm hoping things will slow down a bit in a couple of weeks time though and I'll time to start getting on here a bit more.

As soon as this place settles (Friday), I'll be looking to get to home opens and line up my second buy as soon as I find a good one.

 

[Jake D]

Must have missed that thread. Congrats on making a purchase.