Throwing Good Money After Bad When Moving Premises

Whether you're a business or a landlord, when you're selling a business or a vacant commercial property you will face a number of expenses: the Energy Performance Certificate, the agents' fees, decorators' costs for doing the place up ready to sell, landlord's fees… and solicitors fees.

What you'll pay for:

With most of these, you'll either pay when you complete the legalities (e.g. agents' fees), or you'll have something to show for it: a shiny new EPC or updated decor - even if your first buyer pulls out of the transaction.

Until now, solicitors' fees have been different.  You get charged for each transaction or partial transaction whether or not the deal goes ahead.  These costs are called "abortive fees".

Problems with buyers:

Currently there are a number of buyers in the marketplace who fall into one of the following categories:

1. Have every intention to buy a business but who find at the last minute (and after the legal process has started) they can't secure the funding they wanted, leading to them withdrawing or offering a lower price for your business, or
2. Want to secure the best deal by hook or by crook, and may even resort to the old practice of "Gazundering" a seller.

Or some variation on the theme.

In these situations, not only does a seller lose time and encounter the hassle of trying to re-market, but to top it all off will have to pay abortive fees to your solicitor as well.  Sometimes these will be stored up and billed when you sell the property or else they'll be charged there and then.

For the sale of a business when prices are already low and margins are tight this can seriously eat into the amount of money released from the sale of a business or property.

ACUMEN's Solution:

At ACUMEN BUSINESS LAW, we have devised a way to ensure that businesses are not charged abortive fees if a buyer pulls out due to their finances.  We will not charge for abortive transactions for as long as you are serious about selling.  We can do this in conjunction with charging a fixed fee for our services, allowing businesses to better predict what they will release from their businesses when they sell.