Buying property – Lawyers fee & stamp duty

After paying the downpayment for the property, will there be any other fees we need to pay firsthand? The answer is yes, and it is going to be quite an amount. The lawyer’s fee. The fee that you are going to pay depends on the price of the property that you are buying. Factor this in as it could cost near to 5 - 10k (including other fees, which I will talk about in my next post.).

Below are Legal fees & Stamp Duty calculation tables ( Source from www.elawyer.com )

* Do note that those rates are constant and usually are the same for all firms. How do we choose which lawyer firms to appoint then? The difference would be the process fee stated by the firms. And most importantly, some lawyers tend to delay your signing & processing duration, which can lead to one month delay and that is risky for loan procedure as the banks could misunderstand that you are having problems with your financial status.  Which is why, once you found a good lawyer firm, be good friend and stick with it for your next property purchasing!


Back to the topic, this is how you can calculate the extra fees incurred, besides the purchasing price.

As an example, if you are buying a RM500,000 property,
First RM150,000 x 1% = RM1,500
Remaining RM350,000 x 0.7% = RM2,450
Total: RM3,950 for Legal Fees

First RM100,000 x 1% = RM1,000
Remaining RM400,000 x 2% = RM 8,000
Total : RM9,000 for Stamp Duty

Add them up = RM3950 + RM9000 = RM 12950 !

That is 13K extra that you need to consider in ! 
A large amount indeed for us commoners.
It often shocks people as they forgot to think about this. If you are unable to fork out this amount then the whole purchasing & signing agreement can be cancelled so be careful of it.

Good news is, the property market is soft now therefore quite a lot developers are sweetening their sales with free legal fees and others. 
Take a look at [ Urban Suites ] & [ Golden Triangle 2]

Happy investing!

W.