Singapore Expats

Hello everyone. Need some advice on legal fees for purchase of house in Singapore. How much do you pay?

My bank gave me a subsidy up to $2500 but my lawyer is charging me $2900. I heard from local colleagues and friends that the standard fee is typically lower than $2500. Am I getting ripped off because I am new to this city??? Or do all lawyers in shenton way cost this much??

BananaChips wrote:Hello everyone. Need some advice on legal fees for purchase of house in Singapore. How much do you pay?

My bank gave me a subsidy up to $2500 but my lawyer is charging me $2900. I heard from local colleagues and friends that the standard fee is typically lower than $2500. Am I getting ripped off because I am new to this city??? Or do all lawyers in shenton way cost this much??

Yes, lawyers cost much. Especially in the city.

I too had to chip in a few hundreds extra on top of the subsidized part, but you could also look at it relatively.

What portion is that on the total cost?

Less than 0.05% I assume as you can hardly find any property under 800 000 nowadays.

So I would really focus on more relevant places to save money than that 400 you have to chip in from your pocket. Like the mortgage margins etc.

After 1 day of avoiding my phone calls, my lawyer finally replied reasoning that the cost is based on the amount of work done as we can see from thickness of the file. That's kinda of cute. I never knew that legal fees were measured based on thickness of files. Furthermore my case was rather straightfoward. I had to always comply with the lawyer's working hours despite my work schedule. To make matters worse, I just found out that my local colleague who goes to the same lawyer was only charged $2500 although he bought an apartment costing $100k more than mine. Fyi, he just completed 1 week ago.

Honestly if he would just be more polite about the whole matter and reasonable, I wouldn't mind paying. Hope this helps other expats

BananaChips wrote:After 1 day of avoiding my phone calls, my lawyer finally replied reasoning that the cost is based on the amount of work done as we can see from thickness of the file. That's kinda of cute. I never knew that legal fees were measured based on thickness of files. Furthermore my case was rather straightfoward. I had to always comply with the lawyer's working hours despite my work schedule. To make matters worse, I just found out that my local colleague who goes to the same lawyer was only charged $2500 although he bought an apartment costing $100k more than mine. Fyi, he just completed 1 week ago.

Honestly if he would just be more polite about the whole matter and reasonable, I wouldn't mind paying. Hope this helps other expats

Did you ask the price in advance? I'm sure you knew that you can choose the lawyer of yr preference? Based on yr criteria such as flexible hours if that is important to you.

Actually legal fees in general are measured based on the thickness of customer's wallet, and that is universal.

That and the individual's pain tolerance!

sundaymorningstaple wrote:That and the individual's pain tolerance!

Obviuosly you can hide a small fee into a big price, that goes without saying. That how lawyers and bankers, real estate agents make their money. That's why for the service the lawyer provides I consider the fee ok, as it is not even in promilles of the total.

What actually surprises me more is that it actually seems to be mandatory to use lawyer to do this little paperwork when purchasing property. I would think it is such a routine transaction that I could just do it myself and register the property under my name after paying to the seller. But no, obviously there needs to be at least 3 lawyers involved: seller's, bank's and buyer's. This sounds like some inherited process from the colonial years in a country that otherwise managed to remove most of unnecessary bureaucracy. And as the fees are small nobody bothers to do anything about it.

ProvenPracticalFlexible wrote:

BananaChips wrote:After 1 day of avoiding my phone calls, my lawyer finally replied reasoning that the cost is based on the amount of work done as we can see from thickness of the file. That's kinda of cute. I never knew that legal fees were measured based on thickness of files. Furthermore my case was rather straightfoward. I had to always comply with the lawyer's working hours despite my work schedule. To make matters worse, I just found out that my local colleague who goes to the same lawyer was only charged $2500 although he bought an apartment costing $100k more than mine. Fyi, he just completed 1 week ago.

Honestly if he would just be more polite about the whole matter and reasonable, I wouldn't mind paying. Hope this helps other expats

Did you ask the price in advance? I'm sure you knew that you can choose the lawyer of yr preference? Based on yr criteria such as flexible hours if that is important to you.

Actually legal fees in general are measured based on the thickness of customer's wallet, and that is universal.

Hi, ProvenPracticalFlexible. Yeah I did ask the fees beforehand. He said the bank subsisdy would cover the entire legal cost. Unfortunately it was a verbal agreement. Big regret!

The service was fab for the first meeting and just downhill from there on. I guess he knew that the money is in his pocket once he starts processing the paperwork hence less attention to the client?

As for the hours, he is only available weekday from 11am to 12noon. Is this common too?

BananaChips wrote:
Hi, ProvenPracticalFlexible. Yeah I did ask the fees beforehand. He said the bank subsisdy would cover the entire legal cost. Unfortunately it was a verbal agreement. Big regret!

The service was fab for the first meeting and just downhill from there on. I guess he knew that the money is in his pocket once he starts processing the paperwork hence less attention to the client?

As for the hours, he is only available weekday from 11am to 12noon. Is this common too?

OK, that's different matter all together, that's what I consider cheating if he changed the price.

And no I don't think 11am to noon is normal availability hours. I mean I don't expect the lawyer to be available 24h for me for such a basic thing for a relatively small fee, but still some flexibility. We have had our meetings agreed case by case; 4.30pm, 5.30pm and 6pm, plus the lawyer or lawyer's secretary is available via email and phone for any questions or updates for normal office hours from 9 to 5.