House sale: How is residual payment paid?

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 23 Oct 2004, MM wrote

Ours was done (some 5 years ago) as a bank transfer -- I think we were given a choice by the solicitor, though.

[MM]

How is the residual payment left over after completing a house sale usually paid out? Cheque, or transfer to bank account?

MM

[Malc]

Yup ours was too.

-- MAlc

[David McNeish]

Depends how much it is. A CHAPS transfer to your account means you get=20 cleared funds on the same day, so you start earning interest immediately=20

- but it usually costs about =A315-20.

David

[Richard Faulkner]

In message , MM writes

Generally by cheque unless you specify bank transfer, or some other method. (Cheque means the money stays in the solicitors account for longer)

[Andy Hall]

...and the interest paid to the client?? No, I thought not. A few days interest on a few hundred grand across a few hundred customers a year is a nice earner.

Still the banks pull the same scam on cheque clearance. Three days on reconciliation between UK accounts? Yeah right. I might believe 3 seconds. Just.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[raden]

In message , Andy Hall writes

... And is there anybody who hasn't noticed that Safeway and Homebase charge 2.5% for credit card payments now - for CC administration. How much do they pay on transactions, 1% ?

crooks

The information contained in this post may not be published in, or used by

[Andrew Gabriel]

Lots of places do, but it's not added to the bill. Are you saying Safeway and Homebase add 2.5% extra on?

BTW, it costs business to handle cash or cheques too. A know a corner shop keeper. He ends up with a surpless of £1 coins, but a large deficit of coppers. He has to pay to buy coppers from the bank, and pay to return surplesses of £1 coins.

[Richard Faulkner]

In message , raden writes

Is crooks your name, or are you calling them crooks?

Do they actually add this to your bill, or is it one of those internal things which enables them to avoid some VAT - which lots of firms do these days.

I know IKEA are making a charge which is added to the bill, but I didnt think Safeway and Homebase would take a lead on this?

[Ed Sirett]

I had clocked the fact that they tell you that 2.5% of the payment (the same amount however you pay) was to their CC admin company. I wondered why they had to tell us. I hadn't realized it was to avoid VAT.

Sounds like "Jaffa Cakes Are they bisuits?" About £10m quid is riding on the answer. I think the answer ws that the company won as they were classed as cakes (NO VAT). It ws a phyrric (sp?) victory as Customs & Excise then argued that they were chocolate cakes ( with VAT )

[Peter Ramm]

I would definitely have it as a transfer. I read over last couple of months of someone who had sold their house and the money was sent as a cheque. Unfortunately, the cheque was "intercepted" - a bank account in the name of the beneficiary opened and the money disappeared. (I've Googled for it and checked archives but can't find original article)

[Huge]

[23 lines snipped]

They're not charging *you*. It's a VAT scam.

And good on 'em. Anything that stops those evil thieving bastards in Downing Street getting their hands on *more* of our money is a good thing.

[Huge]

Banks are businesses too, you know.

[Owain]

"Ed Sirett" wrote | Sounds like "Jaffa Cakes Are they bisuits?" About £10m quid | is riding on the answer. | I think the answer ws that the company won as they were classed | as cakes (NO VAT). It ws a phyrric (sp?) victory as Customs & | Excise then argued that they were chocolate cakes ( with VAT )

If it wasn't true you couldn't make it up could you

Owain

[Rick Dipper]

It depends on your solicitor, most shy away from transfers to swiss bank accounts.

Rick

[Richard Faulkner]

I think we will find that those "evil thieving bastards" will collect whatever they want from us, one way or another.

"We will not increase income tax" is a phrase which comes to mind.

[raden]

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[Tony Bryer]

No it's a right pain. If I buy something for my business at PC World they do this 2.5% thing which means having to enter the bill as two items, one the goods, the other the non-VAT card processing charge.

[Huge]

So write to the evil thieving bastard at No.11 Downing Street.

And stop shopping at PC World. They're worse robbers than the Chancellor.

[RichardS]

I think that there are strict rules on this - at least there used to be when I was part of audit of Solicitor's accounts (though not companies, the Law Society had requirements for independent audit of Solicitor's accounts).

IIRC it was something like a limit, whether time, value or some combination of both. Under the limit, Solicitors did not have to pass on interest earned on client accounts (and those accounts do have to be kept strictly separate from the Solicitor's business accounts), over the limit they had to.

Even a day I could cope with as cheque clearance and BACS processing is AAUI a daily batch process. Three is taking the proverbial, and of course this is just for the core clearing banks. Many outside this system take even longer - I think it's Abbey that can take 6 days routinely.